That’s exactly what the gov should do, it’s literally the job we want them to do, it’s not bug brother here, the intelligent response and exactly how you stop a pandemic.
Cases in point, Russia closed it’s borders in Jan, has has only two dozen cases from Russians coming back from Italy, and they all recovered - no epidemic in Russia. Singapore closed borders and is already on the down curve.
Germany didn’t close borders or stop flights and predicts 70% infection rate and has deaths in the hundreds and cases in the thousands.
Yes, fear doesn’t always help, but it’s keeping people at home and that’s a rational and normal reaction, which shouldn’t be dismissed. Fear evolved to keep us alive when the higher brain’s thinking is too slow, uninformed or confused. Paying attention to it is merely prudent. Far is not bad, it’s not negative and it’s not to be eliminated, it’s a useful and appropriate human survival mechanism.
“I’m afraid of knife fights” - Bush
It’s what causes greed and selfishness and violence and hoarding.
This is just unnecessary name calling. What most people are shopping for isn’t a fear of lack and it’s not selfish. It is prompted by fear, appropriately so, so that they can hole up and not need to go out for a month or three, doing thier part to stop spread. Most only have enough in the house for the week ahead. There’s no predicted disruption of supply chain yet, panic buying clears shelves for only the day it happens until the next delivery. There could be if the lorry drivers get sick, which they would if people didn’t stay home to stop spread.
Whether an individual is likely to die - which most are not - isn’t the point. The need is to stop infection, remove the virus from the population where it has a chance to infect vulnerable people and live long enough to mutate into something worse. Second to that, slowing infection rates so that medical systems are not overwhelmed is also important.
I think the effect of the change in lifestyle and social pressure is going to be interesting, but I don’t really have any hope it’s going to be all that and a bag of chips. It wasn’t in China, it won’t be anywhere else.