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Just what is it about potential pandemics that scare us so? While the odds of dying from a car accident or heart disease are greater -- at least in the United States -- rare infectious diseases still loom larger in our collective nightmares.

The truth is, the odds don't factor into what frightens us. Our rational minds aren't calling the shots here -- our irrational fears are. There is something supremely unsettling about the invisibility of germs and viruses and the way they spread that invokes our deepest, most primal survival instincts.

But here is a quick reality check: While the Wuhan coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has produced a dozen confirmed cases in the US (mostly involving people who recently traveled to Wuhan, China, where the virus originated), the common flu has affected approximately 19 million Americans and killed about 10,000 people so far this season.

Anxiety can sometimes be a constructive response, as it inspires caution and careful analysis of a situation before jumping in. But as anyone who has experienced overwhelming anxiety can attest, it is not likely a response based on logic, facts and figures, or realistic threat levels.

The public may respond with panic, fear and suspicion-- and sometimes even outright superstition, paranoia or moral judgement when it comes to unfamiliar illnesses. The victims, even after recovery, may be shunned and discriminated against. Communities, even families, can be torn apart.

People who are fearful may follow not only the guidelines recommended by health experts, but go far beyond them: My children can't be in a classroom with your children, we don't want a clinic in our village, you aren't allowed entry back into the country under any circumstances.

When the 1918 influenza killed 759 people in Philadelphia in one day alone, John Barry, who chronicled the pandemic in his 2004 book The Great Influenza, wrote, 'Fear began to break down the community of the city. Trust broke down. Signs began to surface of not just edginess but anger, not just finger-pointing or protecting one's own interests but active selfishness in the face of general calamity.'

Dangerous misconceptions can emerge out of this pervasive fear, anxiety and ignorance -- the less people know, the more they might panic. The results can be deadly. We saw this around victims of AIDS, SARS, and Ebola. Indeed, health workers and responders battling the latest Ebola outbreak suffered more than 300 attacks in 2019 by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, leaving at least six dead and 70 wounded.

Outbreaks can, indeed, be terrifying, and often involve mass casualties. And there's no denying that some diseases have the potential to kill in horrific ways. In their relentless march from host to host, infectious diseases seem to underscore what we know, but -- whistling past the graveyard -- try to ignore. We are vulnerable, we are mortal, we will all die.

But when our emotions and fears take over, we have difficulty making rational decisions. We become anxious or angry and unable to process information. Experts might be trying to get out the facts in a clear and concise manner, but if you're already in an emotionally vulnerable place, you might not be hearing them. Public health professionals have long recognized the importance of acknowledging people's feelings and reassuring them with facts.

One helpful resource is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which presents the latest confirmed statistics and gives scientifically valid advice on preventing the spread of respiratory diseases like coronaviruses, including: washing your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or with alcohol-based hand sanitizer; avoiding touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands; and staying home when you are sick.

Facts do win out in the end, although this may take years. When was the last time anyone except for the most alarmist among us worried that the person sitting next to us on the subway or serving our salad had HIV/AIDS? And yet, there was a time when 'AIDS hysteria' was commonplace, and a Florida family, whose three young sons were infected with AIDS, were subjected to bomb and death threats and a school boycott before their house burned down in a suspicious fire.

We all live in a world with random, indiscriminate threats: terrorist attacks, plane crashes, unexpected losses and unexplained illnesses.

In the face of a perceived threat, try to listen calmly -- with an open mind and an open heart -- to the facts. And rather than run from your fears or get stuck in them, try to be present with your anxieties and transform your fears. Use them to make yourself more cognizant of your surroundings and to do what is appropriate to take care of yourself and those around you.

I assure you, misguided decisions based on fear can be just as dangerous as the original threat itself.

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Excessive fear of the Wuhan coronavirus can be dangerous - KEZI TV

And social media has been more than a vehicle for information: It has also spawned more journalism and a greater variety of voices in recent years. Some of the deeper coverage of the coronavirus crisis has come from nontraditional, online-only news sites, like Tengxun and Sohu, which officially arent allowed to carry out independent reporting, and so-called self-media (zi meiti in Chinese), self-operated social-media accounts that produce anything from entertainment to political commentary. Some of these platforms are now profitable, run by former journalists, and feature citizen journalism.

But the window for critical reporting in times of crises tends to be quite narrow, and it opens and shuts rather unpredictably. This is partly because officials practice what I have described elsewhere as guarded improvisation: With social stability as their ultimate aim, the authorities try to strike a fragile balance between political control and curated transparency, alternating between censorship or propaganda and allowing the media, or its surrogates, to press for accountability.

I found, for example, that news investigations into the earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province, in 2008 more than 69,000 dead were allowed only for a few weeks. After accounts revealed that poorly built schools had contributed to the death toll, the government blocked independent inquiries into the disaster.

Once a crisis seems like it could cause social instability especially when public blame appears to shift from the local to the central authorities the government starts reining in the media and tries to co-opt it into delivering a unified, official message. Even Hu Xijin, the editor of the nationalistic Global Times, has called out the Wuhan government for silencing whistle-blowers in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. On the other hand, some critical articles about the epidemic though not necessarily the hardest-hitting ones have already vanished from the internet.

There is no telling how much longer Chinese journalists and concerned citizens will be able to report on and raise hard questions about the crisis. But its worth remembering that authoritarianism also is the mother of creativity. Chinas efforts to steer, muffle or control the media have produced alternative news sources that subtly, indirectly skirt restrictions. And this, the authorities tolerate, to a point. Even under President Xi Jinping, the government is sensitive and somewhat responsive to bottom-up pressure from the people their need to know, their calls for accountability. In China, too, as the coronavirus epidemic reveals, there is a social contract between the public and the party-state.

Maria Repnikova (@MariaRepnikova) is an assistant professor of Global Communication at Georgia State University and the author of Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism.

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The Subtle Muckrakers of the Coronavirus Epidemic - The New York Times

Updated February 07, 2020 13:34:48

Doctors reprimanded for "spreading rumours".

Multiple accounts of families in Wuhan with deceased relatives who never got tested.

An army of state media workers being sent to the epicentre to help "guide" public opinion about the outbreak.

They're the signs that have fuelled concerns that, 17 years after the Chinese Government's disastrous cover-up of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, authorities may be engaged in similar practices.

It's the question people abroad ask me the most.

The evidence shows that in the initial weeks of the outbreak authorities in Wuhan reprimanded whistleblowers including at least one doctor who contracted the virus for alerting others to the danger.

Officials also downplayed the severity of the virus, disastrously telling people it likely couldn't be transferred between humans, when they already had cases that strongly suggested it could, including the infection of 14 hospital workers.

But since those early missteps, it has become trickier to pinpoint efforts to downplay or obfuscate the severity of the outbreak.

China's top investigative journalistic outlets have been allowed leeway to report from the epicentre, and the whistleblowers have even been receiving some praise in state media.

A shortage of test kits and numerous reports of patients turned away, untested, from hospitals that were already full has helped form a general consensus on the ground that the official figures aren't keeping up with the real number of infections.

But even as testing has improved and the number of confirmed cases has skyrocketed, no-one believes authorities can accurately document new diagnoses for such a fast-spreading virus in real time particularly one where some patients have spread it before showing symptoms.

The Chinese Government's centralised control for distributing the statistics is certainly playing a role in slowing down the release of information, a factor noted by the embattled Wuhan Mayor in an interview.

In messages seen by the ABC, a specialist doctor who works in a major Beijing hospital warns people in an encrypted chat group that the outbreak in the capital is more serious than is being reported.

His choice of a foreign encrypted messaging app instead of the far more popular WeChat reflects rules that could see him disciplined for disseminating information through non-approved channels.

While such regulations could be seen to stifle and suppress information about the outbreak, they're not new, but a standard part of China's tightly controlled information system.

More intriguing is the announcement, trumpeted by state TV, that the Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department has dispatched 300 journalists to Wuhan and Hubei province.

According to state media, China's leader Xi Jinping has tasked them with "clear requirements" for "education and public opinion guidance", to "help win the battle to control the epidemic".

Again, "public opinion guidance" is a standard directive for journalists in China, but the fanfare around this media group has many wondering if information coming from non-government sources in the epicentre might start facing a clampdown.

On Wednesday, a local health commission official in Hubei described the outbreak as not just a disaster, but a "man-made" one, quoting conversations with doctors in Wuhan.

The post received 340,000 likes on the Twitter-like platform Weibo before disappearing.

It spread further in private groups on WeChat before being censored.

The concern about censorship is heightened because China's Government is now less than one month away from its carefully crafted annual political showpiece the National People's Congress, an event that brings thousands of delegates from across the country to the capital.

In the current crisis it's unthinkable that it could go ahead on time, but in normal circumstances it would be unthinkable that anything could be important enough to derail it.

We'll see in the coming days whether the brave journalists of relatively independent media outlets Caijing, Caixin and others continue publishing investigative reports from Wuhan.

Or if the Communist Party's instinct for control of the narrative takes priority.

Jeremy Fernandez will host a 30-minute special on coronavirus on Friday, February 7 from 7.30pm AEDT on News Channel, featuring a guest panel, explainers on how the virus unfolded and myth-busting the misinformation. The special will be repeated on ABC TV at 10pm

Topics:world-politics,respiratory-diseases,diseases-and-disorders,government-and-politics,health,travel-health-and-safety,china

First posted February 06, 2020 16:34:01

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The question I get asked the most: How much of what China is reporting on coronavirus is actually true? - ABC News

Anyway, it was always obvious to anyone who really paid attention that people like Paul Ryan were fiscal hypocrites, who would suddenly lose all interest in deficits as soon as a Republican occupied the White House. And thats what they did.

As I said, the budget deficit has exploded past $1 trillion under Trump, up from less than $600 billion in Obamas last year. Most of that rise can be attributed to Trumps policies, mainly a tax cut rammed through Congress using exactly the hyperpartisan tactics Obama balked at in 2009.

In a way, the surprising thing about Trumps deficitpalooza is that it hasnt boosted the economy even more, a shortfall that can be attributed to bad design. After all, the corporate tax cuts that were the biggest driver of rising deficits did nothing to increase business investment, which has actually declined over the past year.

And while the Obama stimulus included significant investments in the future, helping in particular to jump-start revolutionary progress in green energy, Trump has never delivered a penny on his promise to rebuild Americas infrastructure.

Still, Trumps deficits have given the economy and Trumps political fortunes a lift in the short term. And that fact should bother you, a lot.

Put it this way: Republicans used the pretense that they cared about fiscal responsibility to engage in de facto economic sabotage as long as a Democrat was in the White House. Then they abandoned the pretense and opened up the spending taps as soon as one of their own was in power. And far from paying a price for their duplicity, they are being politically rewarded.

The implications for party strategy are stark: Maximum cynicism is the best policy. Obstruct, disrupt, and hurt the economy as much as you can, deploying whatever hypocritical excuses you think the media will buy, when the other party holds the presidency. Then abandon all concerns for the future and buy votes once youre back in control.

For whatever reason, Democrats havent been willing or able to behave that cynically. Republicans, however, have. And if Trump is re-elected, that asymmetric cynicism will be the main reason.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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The Triumph of Fiscal Hypocrisy - The New York Times

On average, I spend about 6 hours a day on my phone. It is spent with me going on social media, playing games, or watching Netflix. Every weekend, a notification pops up showing me how much time I have spent and each week it has gone up. I am starting to become a lot more cautious about how much time I spend on my phone because it is starting to worry me. My phone has become something that I always have to have and it never leaves my side. It has gotten in the way of me studying and spending time with my family which has started to worry me. I believe that parents should know how much time their kid is using their phone but I dont think that they should act upon it.

Mark, Hightstown

I understand a little micromanaging when it comes to technology time. However, by the time we reach high school, we should all be responsible for ourselves in that realm, to turn in homework, to know our time limits. It is time for the parents to release their grasp unless it is absolutely necessary.

It is our job as teenagers to learn what happens when we stay on our phones too long and we dont get enough sleep or dont finish a homework assignment, we wont understand the consequences if we dont learn for ourselves.

Josh Reifel, Glenbard West, Glen Ellyn, IL

While I stand by this statement, I would also like to point out that our parents didnt grow up with this stuff, and they may not know how to handle our usage in the best way. Often times I find my parents using the phone that they bought for us as punishment. They threaten to take it away or to throw it out, this only makes out subconscious want it more. Moreover, they make us feel guilty for being born in a world where we do have access to these devices as if we could help it. They say when I was a kid we didnt have to talk to our friends all the time, we would wait to see them the next day at school. They try us guilt you into not using which once again, will only make us want it more to spite them.

kenna royce, Glenbard West HS Glen Ellyn, Il

While some parents see it beneficial to limit teens usage on phones, others dont take any action. For example, my parents have always trusted me to be responsible in my time management, and balancing school, Church, and friends. However, I do understand that my parents pay for my phone, and data usage, and I would willingly comply if they had any restrictions or rules. Phones, however, often rely as a crutch for parents, meaning they often incorrectly blame their childs issue, or challenges for how much time they spend on their phone.

Anna Atwood, Bryant High School Arkansas

In observing my friends and classmates, I think that most of us have a handle on what an appropriate amount of screen time is. Social media can be a breeding ground for bullying, which can then lead to depression and anxiety, but Im not entirely sure that would correlate with simply spending more time on devices. Hopefully, if parents instill the value of limitations while kids are young, they will be able to control themselves appropriately in the future.

Sarah Song, Ames High School

I feel like Im extremely in touch with my personal media usage, but it isnt easy. Apps are designed to keep you on them as long as possible, and sometimes its horribly hard to put down a phone after seeing a Snapchat from your friend pop up. After checking just now, I spent an average of 1 hour 58 minutes on my phone last month. Just shy of 2 hours, which is the recommendation maximum time adolescents should spend on non-education related screens. Many of my peers use them 6+ hours daily.

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What Students Are Saying About How Much They Use Their Phones, and Whether We Should Be Worried - The New York Times