It's natural to be afraid of things you can't see. The history of infectious disease is a history of discrimination.

Sadly, we can see evidence of this already right here in JT.

Wrong, there is a long history of fearing what we do not understand. Unjustified today, we have the means, resources and education to understand, so wilful ignorance is no excuse.

Radiation. Remember the BS we had to deal with during the Fukushima crises.

I'm not afraid of air but I am afraid of things I can't see but could kill me.

We are all direct descendants of ancestors who preferred to take extreme precautions and discriminated against others during various plagues in human history. They were the survivors. Evolution does not reward open-minded virtue signalers when it comes to infectious disease.

If it was that simple, we would not see pushback from China for any domestic policy that other countries enact. After all China is always touting its noninterference policy.

IMHO, the professor is employing a strawman.

Let's ask the professor these two simple questions.

Has the outbreak affected China's economy?

and

Does Japan want to converge with China to reach a similar fate?

We are all direct descendants of ancestors who preferred to take extreme precautions and discriminated against others during various plagues in human history. They were the survivors. 

To be totally correct, we are the descendants of people who were parents. They all died of something and we don't know what of.

pointing to the stigma long attached to leprosy despite its relatively low risk of spreading. 

Historically people discriminated against lepers because it was a feared disease, there was no cure and people didn't know the precise means of transmission.

However, people tend to get quite irrational about these illnesses. Remember swine flu? Utter panic.

This disease seems to have similar mortality rate to influenza - about 2%.

Influenza kills about 500,000 every year. Corona has killed a couple of hundred.