My point is that what you call "panic" is not really panic.

It is not panic to leave a building as fast as you can when a fire alarm rings - even if we don't know what caused the alarm to ring in the first place. I don't care about "numbers over hyperbole" or "science vs conjecture", I leave the building and assume that I am at risk by staying inside.

Likewise, it is not "panic" to propose that we err on the side of precaution and take measures that could contain an epidemic of uncertain risk and dangers, instead of adopting a "wait-and-see" attitude that might be fatal. Chinese doctors wanted to ring the alarm in November and were silenced by the Communist Party. When we got to December/early January and even the Party couldn't hide it anymore, we should've taken that more seriously and started to look for the "way out of the building", even if we didn't know yet how big is the fire/what caused it/who started it/etc.