The Atlantic

The ‘Blitz Spirit’ Won’t Protect Britain From the Coronavirus

As the government inevitably restricts Britons’ lives, the country must reject the voices arguing that it is overreacting.
Source: Henry Nicholls / Reuters

The story of the “Y2K bug” is a parable from which most of us have taken the wrong lesson. No, the world didn’t overreact to a nonexistent threat of computers crashing as 1999 became 2000. Experts identified a problem and took steps to solve it. The measure of their success is that Y2K now feels like a nonevent.

The same logic holds for pandemics. If a government successfully limits the spread of the coronavirus, and the most about who most deserves treatment.

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