China’s reaction to the coronavirus outbreak may have the opposite effect to what’s needed “A major outbreak of novel, fatal epidemic disease can quickly be followed… by plagues of fear, panic, suspicion and stigma.” So wrote the sociologist Philip Strong in a seminal paper on “epidemic psychology” published in 1990. Strong was writing in the wake of the HIV/Aids pandemic of the 1980s. But, he pointed out, most epidemics, going back to the medieval plagues, exhibit a similar pattern. So do more recent ones, from Sars to Ebola to the current coronavirus outbreak. Last week the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global emergency. Whether the drastic steps being taken to contain it are proportionate or an over-reaction are a matter of debate. But responses to epidemics, as Strong observed, are rarely shaped by medical needs alone. Continue reading...