Commentary For the past half-century or more, manufactured scares have been a recurrent part of life. Every year a very small number of people are killed (usually only 1) or injured by bears here in Hokkaido, Japan. However, the news media invariably plays up these incidents. As a result, for a few weeks every year…

Amid the 2020 COVID pandemic, the world seemed as though it might be coming to an end. Panic struck the world’s citizens, stores were cleaned out, and neighbors were shunned as virus carriers. Amid this chaos, courage and compassion were born within our world’s communities. Individuals set their own needs aside to help others: a…

Commentary So many people made bank (both power and money) on the last pandemic, they are already preparing for a new one. The bit about Monkeypox (remember that health emergency only a year ago?) didn’t really go well, so they are reverting again to the fear of infectious disease, this time the old standby H5N1,…

Commentary Society is broken at many levels, and the economy too. We face a mental health crisis among young people following two years of unprecedented educational and social disruption. The highest inflation in most people’s lifetimes has people nearly panicked about the future, and that combines with strange and unpredictable shortages. And we wonder why….

Commentary It was February 2020, and news accounts had been describing increasingly alarming information about a deadly new virus emanating from Wuhan, China. Apart from my general concern about the spread of the infection, I was confused about some of the basic numbers being aired. The overall message coming from the World Health Organization (WHO)…