Remember the UK intelligence claim that Saddam Hussein could strike the UK with a ballistic missile within 45 minutes? The story goes that this was spun out of a two-year-old conversation with a taxi driver on the Iraq-Jordan border. One thing’s for sure: fear breeds rumour, breeds more fear.  Robert Peckham lives in fear, and claims we’re all entering “an era of insidious, mediatised fear”. This may be a case of misery seeking company. And you can see why: in 1988, this British historian of science (author of several well-received books about epidemics) narrowly missed getting blown up in a terrorist attack on the funeral of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, in Jalalabad. More recently, in 2021, he quit his job at the University of Hong Kong where, he writes, “fear was palpable... friends were being hounded by the authorities, news agencies shut down and opposition leaders jailed”. With the spread of Covid-19, Peckham’s political and medical interests dovetailed in Hong Kong in grim fashion.…