Fear and hope are the two great motivators of human action, and neither untempered by the other leads to wise decision-making. Paralysis by unreasonable fear is as much to be avoided as the foolhardiness induced by groundless hope; but, of the two, fear is the more easily generated. It is certainly more common nowadays than unbounded optimism.
How easily unfounded fear is provoked has been demonstrated this week by the appearance of a new disease in China of unknown causation. No sooner had nine people died of it, out of a global population of six billion, than the end of the world, or at least of humanity, was deemed in certain quarters to be nigh: and this despite the fact that the great majority of the people who have contracted the disease have survived it, not died from it.
Nothing is easier to conjure up from the unknowability of the future than panic.
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