Absolutely. But saying “the coronavirus panic is dumb” does no such thing. If you want to combat the panic you need to reach out to the people who are panicking and convince them to calm down. Dunno about you, but I’ve never met a person who becomes calmer by being told they’re dumb.

The audience for this tweet isn’t the people who are panicking, it’s the people who are not. Its only effect is striking the egos of people who feel they are too smart to panic about this.

He's not calling people dumb, but the natural cycles of media boosted self reinforcing hystrionics