On Monday, it was reported that a lab technician working at a research institute in Russia had died after a reported laboratory leak of plague. Unsurprisingly, this has generated a host of news stories speculating about lab leaks, infection spread and the potential for a global public health response. This is hardly a surprise — the words “plague” and “outbreak” are almost guaranteed to attract attention.

However, the details behind the headlines tell a less sensational story. To date, there have been no secondary cases reported. And even if the death ends up being confirmed as a case of pneumonic plague, significant spread is unlikely given that infection typically requires close contact and prolonged exposure. In short, there is no reason to worry — yet.

But that is why the response now is so important. When a serious but rare infection is identified, a localized response to restrict further spread is understandable. Yet, for those asking what the broader public policy response should look like, the obvious answer is: nothing at all. There is now enough evidence from the disastrous Covid response to recognize that public health interventions can impose substantial costs of their own. Any response to the outbreak of an infectious disease should be judged not only by its potential benefits but also by its wider consequences.

In order to understand why, this week’s headlines need to be put into context. Since Covid, various infectious disease events have generated calls for widespread public health interventions, including monkeypox, avian flu and measles. In every case, the attention has proved more alarming than the eventual public health impact. Such is the nature of the news cycle, but it is important to recognise how much the response to Covid has shifted the Overton window.

Since the pandemic, approaches to disease that would previously have been unthinkable, such as surveillance and preventative removal from education or work, are openly discussed in response to every scare. Each time they are discussed, significant proportions of the population lose even more confidence in authority.

As a result, the disconnect between the public health establishment and the public has grown. Yet policymakers still seem unwilling to learn the right lessons. Instead, they make authoritarian attempts to shut down debate, which undermines public trust and contributes to vaccine hesitancy. Rather than recognizing their mistakes and trying to rebuild trust, politicians find it easier to blame “misinformation” and focus on policy measures aimed at restricting open debate.

In the US, there has been some effort to recognize these past mistakes. The appointment to senior positions of experts who were critical of the Covid response, such as National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya, have been encouraging. There has also been increased scrutiny of the coordinated attempt to shut down discussion of the lab-leak hypothesis in the early stages of the Covid debate.

Yet the UK seems to be going in the opposite direction, as Labour doubles down on efforts to police online discussion. This is evidenced by extensions to the Online Safety Act, the use of which could include scanning private messaging, and a strategy paper aimed at combating “online misinformation and direct content blocking”. Perhaps the most striking case, given the loss of confidence in mainstream media outlets, is the proposal to force social media companies to prioritize “trusted” sources of news which they identify as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. All this is downstream of a political establishment that became addicted to the powers it adopted during Covid.

There may be little that can be done about scary news headlines accompanying every new infectious-disease scare. But policymakers must remain grounded in evidence. This new case of a Russian plague infection is a stark reminder that no one should rush to judgments, and that proportionality must be paramount in a public health response. Above all, the case should be made that robust and open public debate is more likely to improve public policy than it is to damage it, even when that debate is uncomfortable for politicians.

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David Paton is a Professor of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University Business School.

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