One of the ways the Coronavirus kills is by stimulating an overreaction of a patient’s own immune system. “Diseases such as covid-19 and influenza can be fatal due to an overreaction of the body’s immune system called a cytokine storm.”
This metaphor can also describe how society can harm itself when measures taken to control a disease do more harm than good. Perhaps the most forceful and controversial reaction to the Coronavirus epidemic has been the lockdown, which believe it or not, did not exist in the American context as a bureaucratic concept before 2006.
Though, to be fair, we did have mass closings in 1918. But read the whole thing.