Watch out for the Chicken Littles gleefully pushing panic and doom
By John Podhoretz
March 25, 2020 | 8:45pm
We are living through what may be the worst and most elemental fear human beings can experience — the fear of invasion.
And the invader isn’t a human aggressor that can be repelled with military force — but an invisible and not-exactly-alive Âviral contagion that somehow gets inside your body or the body of your loved ones and attacks from within even as it continues to spread its damage from without. This is the horror of the novel coronavirus.
For Americans especially prone to that specific fear, there is Âalmost no piece of coronavirus news that doesn’t trigger a renewed sense of panic. Unfortunately, the explosive growth over the past decade of social media has given rise to a kind of panic loop, a second-by-second retailing of the worst possible scenarios raised by the outbreak.
There is something peculiar Âgoing on in the way certain people are discussing the coronavirus — journalists, pundits and the armies of “influencers†endowed with a blue checkmark for no obvious reason. It’s almost as though they are taking a salacious pleasure in the grimmest and most haunting possibilities.
It’s like Chicken Little is secretly thrilled the sky is falling.
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https://nypost.com/2020/03/25/watch-out-for-the-chicken-littles-gleefully-pushing-panic-and-doom/
