14 Mar 2020, 08:39

Unpopular Opinion: Covid-19 News is Exaggerated

Do you remember how many times “terror” was mentioned in the media after September 11th, 2001? Do you know how much concern has been spent on protecting us from “terror” vs the number of lives that have been lost to “terror?” (0.05% in 2017)

"News, by definition, is something almost never happens.  But
that's not the way our brains work.  If it's in the news, if it's
talked about, if we hear about it a lot, we confuse that with it
being common."

  - Bruce Schneier, 2017 (1:50 in the video below)

Boeing 737 Max got pulled from service because air travel is super carefully controlled and super safe (we have to live 188,000 lifetimes to die once in an airplane). Terrorism isn’t even on the above list as a possible way to die in the US in 2017.

And yet, the risk of dying in a plane is far more likely to happen from non-terror (red line) than terror (gray line)

So with all that in mind, I look at the Covid 19 spread numbers and do not understand what all the fuss is about. In my understanding, influenza is a pandemic every year and no one really worries about it.

This NY Times article compares influenza and corona virus.

Influenza kills 0.1% of its victimes and apparently the corona virus is twenty or thirty times as deadly as influenza.

Okay fuck. I see. If 3% of the population die this year, that would be pretty significant.

Y’all better start washing your hands, and don’t touch ya face.