A disgusting “fuite en avant” with devastating consequences

The French have a wonderful expression which is hard to translate into English:fuite en avant. This expression can roughly be translated as “flight forward”, or “headlong rush”, “panic-induced compulsion to further exacerbate a crisis or calamity” or even “unconscious mechanism that causes a person to throw himself/herself into a dreaded danger”.  No matter how one translates this expression, it is painfully obvious that this is exactly what took place in