On Wednesday, May 27, 2020 at 8:18:40 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Miscalculating Risk: Confusing Scary With Dangerous
The coronavirus kills, everyone knows it. But this isnt the first
deadly
virus the world has seen, so what happened? Why did we react the way
we
did? One answer is that this is the first social media pandemic. News
and
narratives travel in real-time right into our hands.
This spreads fear in a way we have never experienced. Drastic and
historically unprecedented lockdowns of the economy happened and
seemed to
be accepted with little question.
We think the world is confusing €œscary€� with €œdangerous.€� They are not
the
same thing. It seems many have accepted as fact that coronavirus is
one of
the scariest things the human race has ever dealt with. But is it the
most
dangerous? Or even close?
There are four ways to categorize any given reality. It can be scary
but
not dangerous, scary and dangerous, dangerous but not scary, or not
dangerous and not scary.
Clearly, COVID-19 ranks high on the scary scale. A Google news search
on
the virus brings up over 1.5 billion news results. To date, the virus
has
tragically killed nearly 100,000 people in the United States, and more
lives will be lost. But on a scale of harmless to extremely dangerous,
it
would still fall into the category of slightly to mildly dangerous for
most
people, excluding the elderly and those with preexisting medical
conditions.
In comparison, many have no idea that heart disease is the
leading cause of death in the United States, killing around 650,000
people
every year, 54,000 per month, or approximately 200,000 people between
February and mid-May of this year. This qualifies as extremely
dangerous.
But most people are not very frightened of it. A Google news search
for
heart disease brings up around 100 million results, under
one-fifteenth the
results of the COVID-19 search.
Its critical to be able to distinguish between fear and danger. Fear
is an
emotion, its the risk that we perceive. As an emotion, it is often
blind
to the facts. For example, the chances of dying from a shark attack
are
minuscule, but the thought still crosses most peoples minds when they
play
in the ocean. Danger is measurable, and in the case of sharks, the
danger
is low, even if fear is sometimes high.
Imagine if an insurance actuary was so scared of something that she
graded
it 1,000 times riskier than the data showed. This might be a
career-ending
mistake. This is exactly what people have done regarding COVID-19:
making
decisions on fear and not data.
According to CDC data, 81% of deaths from COVID-19 in the United
States are
people over 65 years old, most with preexisting conditions. If you add
in
55-64-year-olds that number jumps to 93%. For those below age 55,
preexisting conditions play a significant role, but the death rate is
currently around 0.0022%, or one death per 45,000 people in this age
range.
Below 25 years old the fatality rate of COVID-19 is 0.00008%, or
roughly
one in 1.25 million, and yet we have shut down all schools and
day-care
centers, some never to open again! This makes it harder for mothers
and
fathers to remain employed.
All life is precious. No death should be ignored, but we have allowed
our
fear to move resources away from areas that are more dangerous, but
less
scary, to areas that are scary, but less dangerous. And herein lies
the
biggest problem.
Hospitals and doctors offices have had to be much more selective in
the
people they are seeing, leaving beds open for COVID-19 patients and
cutting
out elective surgeries. According to Komodo, in the weeks following
the
first shelter-in-place orders, cervical cancer screenings were down
68%,
cholesterol panels were down 67%, and the blood sugar tests to detect
diabetes were off 65% nationally.
It doesnt stop there. The U.N. estimates that infant mortality rates
could
rise by hundreds of thousands in 2020 because of the global recession
and
diverted health care resources. Add in opioid addiction, alcoholism,
domestic violence and other detrimental reactions from job loss and
despair. Its tragic.
The benefits gained through this fear-based shutdown (if there really
are
any) have massively increased dangers in both the short term and the
long
term. Every day that businesses are shuttered, and people remain
unemployed
or underemployed, the economic wounds grow more deadly. The loss of
wealth
is immense, and this will undermine the ability of nations around the
world
to deal with true dangers for decades to come, maybe forever. We have
altered the course of economic growth.
Shutting down the private sector (which is where all wealth is
created) is
truly dangerous even though many of our leaders suggest we shouldnt
be
scared of it. Another round of stimulus is not what we need. Like a
Band-Aid on a massive laceration, it may stop a tiny bit of the
bleeding,
but the wound continues to worsen, feeding greater and more elaborate
intervention. Moreover, we are putting huge financial burdens on
future
generations because we are scared about something that the data reveal
as
far less dangerous than many other things in life.
A shutdown may slow the spread of a virus, but it cant stop it. A
vaccine
may cure us. But in the meantime, we have entered a new era, one in
which
fear trumps danger and near-term risk creates long-term problems. It
appears many people have come to this realization as the data builds.
Hopefully, this will go down in history as a mistake that we will
never
repeat.
Brian S. Wesbury, Chief Economist
Strider Elass, Senior Economist
RealClear Politics, May 22, 2020

Typical deluded, denial BS. Comparing Covid to shark attacks? Really?
And it wasn't social media that killed 100K in three months and had freezer
trailers in the streets of NYC holding the dead bodies. And that was WITH
the serious measures taken to contain it. This is the worst pandemic in
100 years and we still are in the middle of it, it's not clear what will
happen now that we're rapidly re-opening and people are being reckless.
And what spurs on the recklessness? Deniers.