[null and void]

I’m sure we have many bureaucrats who wouldn’t want the public to ‘panic’ and ‘cause a recession’.

Yup.

During the 1900 plague outbreak in San Fransisco, TPTB never did impose a quarantine, plague eventually spread to the local ground squirrels, and from there to the entire western US.

And when the same city experienced a "gay plague", the city refused to shut down the bath houses.

[Black Agnes]

In all fairness, the bath houses weren’t shut down because likely the city officials were customers...