Women in Hong Kong sitting on the street with sanitary masks to prevent coronavirus infections. | Photo by Miguel Candela/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
One result of a world in which everyone has more or less equal access to publishing tools has been what’s sometimes called an epistemic crisis: a scenario in which large groups of people muddle along with very different understandings of reality, undermining the ability of elected officials to govern. This might be particularly scary during a catastrophe, when citizens are relying upon their government for accurate and potentially life-saving information. If you can’t trust official government announcements — or you are misled into thinking that an official-sounding hoax is real — catastrophes might begin compounding upon one another.
The global outbreak of a coronavirus that originated in China has given us fresh reason to consider the…