Making an unnecessary fuss is often laughed at. On my flight back to Korea after spending a month with my family in Washington D.C. this February, I tried my best to ignore the curious stares of strangers at a single piece of clothing that made me the odd one out — a mask. Back then, wearing a mask in the U.S. was only for those who were either a little too paranoid, or a little too dumb to believe in whatever mass media exaggerates about. Well, look where we are now.

If the word “unpredictable” were a year, it would definitely be 2020. I wouldn’t have to mention the pandemic or the BLM movement that swept across the world. Here in Korea, doctors are currently on an unprecedented strike, with medical students also boycotting classes nationwide. We were hit by two typhoons in three weeks, when we thought we’d just escaped the longest rainy season ever recorded by the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA). And as unpredictable as it all has been, experts in the fields of medicine, meteorology, economy, and politics have all been finding it more difficult than ever to make correct predictions and analyses on what we should expect next.

While under-preparation as a result of a wrong prediction obviously leads to more devastating consequences, overpreparation is no pleasant experience either. One may think it is always better to be safe than sorry, but it’s not always that simple. “All my training sessions were pushed back because of the typhoon forecast,” said a friend serving in the military over the phone. “Well, I didn’t see a single droplet of rain that night and I’m stuck in the training camp for another week for no reason. What was all that fuss about?” While my earliest experience with wearing a mask was an awkward one, overpreparation made at a larger scale goes beyond simply being an embarrassment. It is a waste of effort and resources, and we cannot help but wonder how much better it would have been if we hadn’t overreacted.

The blame then heads toward whoever made the respective prediction. For as long as I can remember, the KMA, for example, has always been mocked as gura-chung (a combination of the colloquial Korean word for “lie”, gura, and the Korean name of KMA, gisang-chung) for how disastrously wrong their predictions can sometimes be. It is reasonable that experts’ lack of capability in making correct predictions and analyses may be criticized, considering how much influence their conclusions have on the general public. However, it appears rather illogical to blame them for having “made a fuss” based on what they have decided was the best prediction. It is one responsibility to come up with the correct answer, and it is another to share it with those who are under its influence.

In reality, it seems that the media is what truly makes an unnecessary and unprofessional contribution to the “fuss”. We gather our information from online articles, news, and video, rather than first-hand from the organization that produces the knowledge. While the media delivers the necessary information, for reporters and journalists who are after something juicy, phrases like “the worst pandemic ever recorded,” or “the worst flood of however many decades” are the preferred headlines over bland but accurate ones. Apart from exaggerating expert opinions, they also fuel an unnecessary level of anxiety and panic within the community.

We must remember that expert advice prepares us for the worst, which may have had a very narrow chance in actually occurring to begin with. Although being overprepared may feel like having made an unnecessary investment, it is much better to focus on the fact that the worst has not happened. It is also part of our responsibility in protecting ourselves to evaluate the reliability of wherever we are gathering information from, and to thoroughly understand the topic in question. Above all, what should definitely be avoided is dismissing a prediction for how absurd it sounds, or simply because the odds of it truly happening are very slim. After all, who knew we’d still be in masks right now?