What We Don't Want to Know: About Panic, Birds and Self-reflection

A few years ago, I saw something on the highway that has stayed with me ever since. It was a small disaster, but it reminded me of a much larger one. More than anything, it brought back a pattern of human behavior we all witnessed in a pretty recent past—and the silence that followed. 

It was a cool day in October. I was driving to work when I noticed a massive flock of birds flying south at a relatively low altitude. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. I thought, There they go again, heading for warmer weather. Since I was traveling at highway speed, I caught up with them quickly. Within minutes, the flock was only a few hundred feet in front of me. For a moment, I thought of Hitchcock's The Birds. There was something eerie about seeing so many birds moving together so close to the road—a single enormous brown cloud filling the sky. Then something horrifying happened. The lead bird suddenly dove toward the pavement, slammed into the highway, and the entire flock followed. Within seconds, birds were tumbling across the asphalt, only to be run over by the cars ahead of me. Almost all of them died. It looked like a mass suicide.

Of course, that's not what actually happened. A flock moves differently than we do. Their reactions happen so quickly that there is almost no room for individual decision-making. If the birds in front suddenly dive because of a navigational mistake or turbulence from a passing truck, the rest follow within milliseconds. They aren't choosing to fly into the ground. They are simply following the movement of those closest to them. That scene has stayed with me because it carries a lesson that applies far beyond birds: Sometimes, following the leader is the worst thing you can do. 

If there's one thing life has taught me, it's that about 85 percent of people do exactly that. 

When you think about it, nature has a way of showing us uncomfortable truths about ourselves. Sometimes the mirror it holds up isn't very flattering. When governments around the world warned us about the danger of COVID-19, much of society went into panic mode. I'll never forget what I saw around me. People who normally valued reason and careful thinking suddenly seemed willing to accept almost any measure presented as necessary. The questions changed. Instead of asking "Is this true?" many people began asking "What must we do?" I found myself returning to a few simple questions. Where did COVID actually rank among deadly diseases? What was the infection fatality rate? But those questions were not always welcomed. The response I often heard was: "Even one death is one too many!" Readers dismissed my criticism as irresponsible. Doubt was interpreted as a lack of compassion. Panic became the default setting. And I've never known panic to be a reliable advisor. 

And now the silence is deafening. 

I don't need to remind you that the media played a role as well, to say the least. Instead of slowing down and examining the images they were broadcasting, many news organizations helped turn them into symbols. One image in particular stayed with me. In January 2020, an Agence France-Presse photograph from Wuhan spread around the world. It showed an elderly man wearing a face mask lying neatly on his back in the middle of a street in Wuhan, a plastic grocery bag still in his hand, while men in white hazmat suits surrounded him. It was a powerful image. And it told a story before anyone had checked the details. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that the photograph instantly became the symbol of an impending apocalypse. It triggered one of humanity's oldest fears. Rational thought largely disappeared, and people drew an immediate conclusion: People are simply dropping dead in the streets from this virus. The part that received far less attention was the context. AFP reported at the time that it could not determine the man's cause of death. Later reports indicated that he did not have COVID-19, and the exact cause of his death was never officially established. 

But by then, it no longer mattered. 

The image had already done its work. Fear had arrived and obedience followed. Once roughly 85 percent of the population believes the danger is as immediate and catastrophic as that single image suggests, there is no longer a critical mass willing to question lockdowns or other emergency measures. People simply comply because the authorities present themselves as the solution to the fear that those images helped cultivate. 

I often remind my students that they are at a university, and that being a university student means learning to think critically. Ironically, it quickly became clear to me in 2020 that it was often the highly educated who accepted the government's and the media's narrative with the least skepticism. You would expect education to make people more willing to question, to examine, and to challenge assumptions. Sometimes it does. But education can also create its own kind of confidence. It's the belief that because you are well informed, you are automatically thinking independently. Many highly educated people are deeply connected to the institutions around them. They work in universities, schools, governments, corporations, media organizations, and research institutions. Their careers and reputations are tied, at least partly, to the trust people place in those institutions. Questioning the system can feel uncomfortable when you are part of that system. It can feel like cutting away the branch you're sitting on.

Closely related to this is the fear of losing your place in the group. Within highly educated circles, the pressure to conform can be enormous. A person who questions official policy can quickly be labeled anti-science or accused of believing in conspiracy theories—phrases that are often repeated almost reflexively, like parrots. For many people in these circles, the fear of being rejected by their peers or appearing unintelligent is stronger than the desire to discover the truth. And of course, nobody wants to appear foolish. Especially not people who have spent years proving that they are intelligent.

Which brings me to another problem: the illusion of informational superiority. 

Many educated people assume that because they read respected newspapers, follow expert opinions, and stay informed through established sources, they are automatically better informed than others. What they often fail to recognize (or simply don't want to recognize) is that this also makes them the primary audience for carefully coordinated institutional narratives. I've met plenty of people who can quote experts all day long but rarely stop to ask their own questions. Citing an authority can feel like thinking. Sometimes it is simply a more sophisticated form of repeating that makes a person sound smart.

There's one more uncomfortable factor. For many highly educated people, science itself has become a form of secular religion. When someone with impressive credentials makes a statement, many people no longer hear a hypothesis waiting to be examined. They hear the final answer. And that creates a strange paradox. The people who possessed the greatest intellectual tools to question events often became the most enthusiastic enforcers of conformity. Meanwhile, the simple question whether the numbers actually supported this more often came from people outside those professional and academic circles. 

And now? Now it's quiet. We've moved on to social media, cat videos, and artificial intelligence. The irony is hard to ignore. Once the panic passed and normal life returned, people just seemed unwilling to look back at how they had behaved. Perhaps that is simply human nature. Looking honestly at our own actions is uncomfortable, especially when we realize that fear may have influenced our judgment more than we would like to admit. So we do what people have always done. We move on. We forget. We choose collective amnesia. The subject is quietly avoided. People jump through the hoop while it's there, then pretend the hoop never existed once it's taken away. 

When I look back on everything that happened, I realize I have more respect for the flock of birds that somehow crashed into the asphalt. They had no sense of superiority. No ego. Their leader made a fatal mistake, died along with the flock, and paid the ultimate price for that mistake. Human beings are different. Their leaders and those in positions of power remained comfortably out of harm's way, while ordinary people were turned against one another and locked inside their homes. Political scientists have long described that strategy as divide and rule. Birds, at least, have no interest in power games.

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