3 ms·

I take the top-level comments so far as an indication that -- if they aren't exactly afraid -- deep down inside, people are definitely feeling a certain amount

I take the top-level comments so far as an indication that -- if they aren't exactly afraid -- deep down inside, people are definitely feeling a certain amount of anxiety about the sudden rise of the Zika virus, and more the the point, what it really means about this new world we we're lurching into. A world which isn't coming to an end -- but slowly but surely, from one day to the next, it's a world which is changing, and generally for the worse. And in which ideas we might have taken for granted until now -- like "Hey, I could just move to Miami, and start a family, if I wanted" -- suddenly become quite complicated, indeed, and fraught with uncertainty. And unfortunately, the only tool they know of to defend themselves with is snark.

jeremysmyth 11y ago
it's a world which is changing, and generally for the worse Ah, but this is objectively wrong, by almost every metric (crime, security, murder, health, longevity, happiness, poverty). What is getting worse is the general level of fear, and this comes from the fact that we can hear bad news faster and more generally than ever before, combined with our evolved nature to implicitly feel that everything that we hear about might personally affect us (see Dunbar's number), and clickbait tactics of news editors and the need to fill the 24 hour news cycle with sensationalism. Fear causes stress, and both fear and stress cause physically and socially damaging effects. To wit: I never met anyone affected (directly or indirectly) by the recent Ebola outbreak in any social environment (online or offline) to which I belong, but almost everyone I spoke to about it was afraid of it. That's not to diminish the effect on the (globally) few people it impacts, which is horrible and terrifying, so the imbalance is not at all universal. However, it's a fair assumption that fear of Zika is considerably more dangerous to the average person (globally) than the risk of the virus itself. Multiply this across all the other things that people are afraid of but that are actually less dangerous now than at any time in our recorded past, and you end up with fear being the most damaging change for the worse.

jeremysmyth 11y ago

it's a world which is changing, and generally for the worse Ah, but this is objectively wrong, by almost every metric (crime, security, murder, health, longevity, happiness, poverty). What is getting worse is the general level of fear, and this comes from the fact that we can hear bad news faster and more generally than ever before, combined with our evolved nature to implicitly feel that everything that we hear about might personally affect us (see Dunbar's number), and clickbait tactics of news editors and the need to fill the 24 hour news cycle with sensationalism. Fear causes stress, and both fear and stress cause physically and socially damaging effects. To wit: I never met anyone affected (directly or indirectly) by the recent Ebola outbreak in any social environment (online or offline) to which I belong, but almost everyone I spoke to about it was afraid of it. That's not to diminish the effect on the (globally) few people it impacts, which is horrible and terrifying, so the imbalance is not at all universal. However, it's a fair assumption that fear of Zika is considerably more dangerous to the average person (globally) than the risk of the virus itself. Multiply this across all the other things that people are afraid of but that are actually less dangerous now than at any time in our recorded past, and you end up with fear being the most damaging change for the worse.