No one is immune to images
Whether "Outbreak", "Contagion" or "Plague Inc." films and video games have shaped and distorted our view of epidemic scenarios. It is important how we fear.
(...) The reporting on the spread of coronavirus in recent weeks has created seemingly familiar exceptional situations: People in protective suits, hasty hamster purchases, politicians looking at screens with maps that have turned red. These are images that we know from films, and which evoke further images from these films. In order to make the invisible of the virus visible, possibly comprehensible, we illustrate our fears with set pieces from invented stories. The cross-fading of fiction and reality is a problem, because these stories are designed to entertain us in a suspenseful way and not to prepare for the case of an actual pandemic, which above all requires clear vision and level-headed action.
Read the whole article (in German), for an English version you can let it translate via deepl.com (quite good results, it's a machine learning algorithm)
ANGST_Niemand-ist-immung-gegen-Bilder_Zeit20-02.pdf (4.40 mb)
Source: Niemand ist immung gegen Bilder (zeit.de)