At its recent Davos annual meeting, the WEF focused much of its attention on how to respond to the fictional “Disease X.” This alarmist concern about an imaginary threat follows hard on the heels of the still-unfolding worldwide devastation wrought by extreme “solutions” to a grossly exaggerated disease threat.

Over the last two centuries, world history shows a marked tendency to take elaborate steps to deal with imaginary or minor problems. In trying to solve them, people have often created, exacerbated, or neglected real problems afflicting many people. 

For instance, the 20th century witnessed massive death and devastation produced by the Nazi attempt to solve an imaginary problem. At least as early as the 19th century, this “problem” was called “the Jewish question” among a number of European–especially German–intellectuals.

One was the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who believed that cruelty to animals and environmental harm were rooted in the Jewish view of nature, based on the Bible. He proclaimed, “It is obviously high time in Europe that Jewish views on nature were brought to an end.”