(December 22) – “Whew, the Y2K problem is nearly over. No, not the computer problem — that one was vastly overrated — but all the caterwauling from consultants, companies and the media about how the changing date was going to kibosh computers. Because the sad truth is that the biggest Y2K problem remains irresponsible alarmism,” write Paul Kedorsky in today’s Globe.

What made people so wild-eyed with their Y2K worries?

In part, we are where we are because the problem was so simple. It has been blissfully easy for doomsayers to concoct end-is-nigh scenarios: Identify some useful product or service that has software or a chip inside, and then imagine if that thing stopped working. Now, just extrapolate to what would happen if everything and everyone that needed that product or service couldn’t get at it. Welcome to havoc.

Because despite our wholesale reliance on technology (and perhaps because of it), many people are still terrified of computers. So with people already a little off-kilter because of so many date digits changing all at once, it didn’t take much to set us off. The result? In the Y2K bug people’s otherwise inchoate fears about computers found a voice: “Ethel! Did you see that article? Those darn computers. I told you they were nothing but trouble!”

It has made the “problem” a just-add-media recipe for fear and paranoia. I was on a New York radio call-in program recently when I was told, in the space of 30 seconds, that Y2K would cause the water supply, the financial system and the orange crop to break down — and what’s more, President Bill Clinton was behind it all. And why was the caller so sure? “Because they’ve all got chips inside,” he said. Mr. Clinton may or may not have been excluded.

But these blithe, chain-logic predictions are loony and irresponsible. Just because something could happen doesn’t mean it will happen. And even if something does go wrong, it doesn’t mean it had anything to do with the Y2K problem. Correlation isn’t causation. Just because my laptop crashes next year doesn’t mean it was caused by a Y2K bug.

We are a society of technological hypochondriacs: We identify a loathsome disease, and immediately decide we have it. Because as any hypochondriac can tell you, it is the most terrifying scenario, however improbable, that you spend the most time worrying about. That rash on my leg? It’s not dry skin; it’s necrotizing fasciitis. And that problem with my spreadsheet crashing? It’s not the video game I’m running; it’s a Y2K problem. Better build a shelter under the barn for Muriel and the kids.

The best treatment for hypochondriacs is facts, experience, and a little scolding. Having worried yourself silly too often about some improbable outcome, most reasonable people eventually find something else to worry about, like taxes or hockey pools. The truth will set you free. And the truth is that despite sweaty protestations to the contrary, we have been sold mostly a Y2K bill of goods.

And some of the sellers are getting worried about people looking for refunds. For example, one of the Y2K disaster’s most grimly gleeful boosters is Canada’s own Peter de Jaeger. Having pounded the Y2K bug drum for more than a decade, Mr. de Jaeger now apparently feels uncomfortable enough with his past exhortations that he has resorted to apologia in recent writings. He now explains his past despair about the problem by saying, in effect, who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t made the problem sound so dire.

It is a defence that Chicken Little would have loved.