> The problem is that we look back and no longer categorize these as “moral panics”, because in the end they turned out to be real and few people remember them

> The problem is that we look back and no longer categorize these as “moral panics”, because in the end they turned out to be real and few people remember them that way. Only the “false” panics remain, which leads to some fallacious conclusions IMO. This is a good point. A similar case: In early 2020, many journalists, TV experts and politicians emphasized that you shouldn't panic. This was true insofar "panic" is by definition irrational, but false insofar they also said that much more people die from the flu in a year, which ended up being false: For several years much fewer people died from the flu. Or when they said "currently the risk is low, so don't worry" -- that few people are being infected now (in early 2020) doesn't mean that the risk of infection is low, because current risk includes the probability of bad things happening in the future. If you race towards a cliff with your car, the risk of dying is already high before you fall of the cliff. So "don't panic!" is ambiguous between "don't be irrational!" (which is a tautology) and "the risk is not high!" which requires justification and may well be false.