3BLMedia.com
Kevin Drum
March 28, 2016
“I was thinking about recent public panics and started listing a few of them in my mind. This is just off the top of my head:
- Crack babies
- Super predators
- Lehmann/AIG/Countrywide etc.
- Mad cow
- Deepwater Horizon
- Daycare child molesters
- Ebola
- ISIS/Syrian refugees
“I’m not saying that none of these were justified. Big oil spills are no joke. Ebola was certainly a big deal in Africa. The financial collapse of 2008 wasn’t mere panic.
“And yet, generally speaking it seems as if public panics are either completely unjustified or else wildly overwrought. Am I missing any recent examples where there was a huge panic and it turned out to be wholly justified? HIV would have been justified in the early ’80s, but of course we famously didn’t panic over that — other than to worry about getting AIDS from toilet seats. Help me out here….”
– From “Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)” by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones (March 24)
