For one, fear is irrational. It is based on a perception of threat and we as humans do it in many ways. One way is to see that others are afraid and therefore w

For one, fear is irrational. It is based on a perception of threat and we as humans do it in many ways. One way is to see that others are afraid and therefore we should too. To add to this, the fear is not entirely unfounded. Estimates of the fatality are between 1% to 4%. No proper case fatality statistics can be computed as the epidemic is not over/have not gone long enough yet. At 1%, this is already 10 times the fatality rate of the seasonal flu so no, this is not just a bad flu season. This is an exceptionally bad flu season. The reason I think countries are still trying to contain it is because if we allow the this flu strain to become seasonal because of lack of containment, it becomes an ongoing price that we have to pay each year. Within each new strain of flu that we encounter in the future, if we successively fail to contain each one, there will be many more strains of flu seasonally. Of course， a technological breakthrough may alter such a course.