I’m not sure I find the argument that officials want to avoid looking bad to be persuasive. The public generally finds out about any event big enough to “cause a panic” anyway, even if officials can keep it under wraps temporarily.

“That’s a position held by a number of people in the government and a number of people in a number of governments who argue that, yes, we the government are going to prepare, but for God’s sake don’t tell the public, because . . . they might get excessively frightened, and that might be bad for their psychology and bad for the economy.”

But didn’t we see officials publicly panicking during the height of the financial crisis? Bush, Bernanke and Paulson all gave very nervous public speeches both before and after Lehman.

Is a financial crisis somehow different than an epidemic, regarding the manipulation of public opinion? It might be. Since we think we designed the economy, we’re more likely to think we can do something to fix it. An epidemic, on the other hand, is a threat external to humanity.