Because sometimes works of fiction can provide lessons useful in real-life situations, it’s worth looking back at perhaps the first great bestseller about a possible pandemic, Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.

In doing so, allow me to further elaborate a point I made in my most recent column, namely that we should be wary both of underreacting and overreacting to the current contagion. Sometimes overreacting, in particular, can turn a tragedy into a full-fledged catastrophe.

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