There is a tacit presupposition here that needs to be made explicit if we are not to betray it, namely, the distinction between properties and attributes. A pro

There is a tacit presupposition here that needs to be made explicit if we are not to betray it, namely, the distinction between properties and attributes. A property is something that follow from the essential nature of a thing. A mere attribute is something that isn't and could vary without contradicting the essential nature of a thing. So a property of triangles, following from Triangularity, is that its angles sum to 180 degrees. But the color of a triangle is an attribute that does not follow from its Triangularity. It may be important in some context, but it must be understood as secondary (of course, in a secondary way, you could say that it does tell us that the thing in question is capable of having that attribute, but the attribute itself is not the consequence of its essential nature). A specialist can suffer from the law of instrument for analogous reasons. If you put an immunologist in charge of policy, he may reduce the common good to merely those things with immediate and obvious immunological relevance to him. Sure, freedom from infection is important to the common good, but it isn't the only thing and indeed optimizing for that in excess incurs an enormous cost to the common good. Our education system, sadly, does not prepare us in foundational ways to reason and understand properly and this lack of intellectual and moral discipline can manifest in fixations (undisciplined passions, like in this case fear, can produce these fixations).