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Why Conservatives and Liberals Are Not Experiencing the Same Pandemic

32 points by privong 6y ago

dllthomas 6y ago
> Note that our results cannot say which of these is happening in greater measure. That's okay. Every reader can figure it out.
- lolsal 6y ago
  I couldn't; could you help me figure it out?
  - dllthomas 6y ago
    It's the other team. My comment was a joke, pointing at my expectation that most readers will come to a conclusion despite the warning.
JamesBarney 6y ago
> Out of six, the strongest effects emerged for goals that involved government-imposed social distancing rules. Conservatives oppose the government telling them when they can or cannot leave their homes; liberals support such policies. Because a threatening disease might validate government interventions that conservatives dislike, conservatives appear motivated to downplay the severity. Or conversely, because a threatening disease might validate government interventions that liberals do like, liberals seem motivated to magnify the threat. Ugh I hate when people do this, it seems like lazy thinking. Decreased government intervention is a terminal goal for many individuals, but increased government intervention is not. Liberals are more willing to trade government intervention for lives saved. > We found that the general effect of ideology on perceived COVID-19 threat significantly decreased at higher levels of experience with COVID-19. Conservatives view the disease as less threatening than liberals, but this difference shrinks among participants who have been more impacted by the disease. Looks like the divide is not entirely different values, and that it's at least partially driven my misinformation. * I know there are probably some liberals for who this is a terminal goal but it's a vanishingly small amount.
- Tostino 6y ago
  That sounds more likely to me, and completely agreed on the point that increased government for the sake of it has never been a point of conversation for me I can think of with someone who identifies as liberal where they were arguing that more government is the end goal, but there may be specific things they think the government should handle (healthcare). On the reverse, in my experience talking to more conservative people, I have had that topic of "smaller government" come up multiple times. So my anecdotal experiences align with your points pretty well.
- floor2 6y ago
  > increased government intervention is not Seems like a weird, pedantic half-truth. It's like "I'm not a racist, but ..." except for government. "I don't want increased government intervention... except for the areas of healthcare, housing, education, guns, the economy, free speech, religion, banking, labor, technology and a few dozen other areas, those I do want increased government intervention in". I get that it doesn't come from "I love authoritarianism and want more of it" but the practical end is the same when the solution to every problem is "More government regulations or interventions"
  - edmundsauto 6y ago
    For quite a few of the items in your list, the solution from liberals tends to be "Different government regulations" or "Different beneficiaries of government regulations". Which is quite different from more government.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - davidwitt415 6y ago
    It can be seen as a corrective to 'let the free market decide everything,' which is clearly showing its limitations in responding to the COVID-19 crisis.
downerending 6y ago
Interesting, but I think misses a major point: Many conservatives are not apathetic, nor do they feel less threat. Rather, they see a different balance of threats. In particular, shutting down our medical system (ex COVID-19) means that large numbers of people will die of other diseases/conditions. Shutting down the economy means that large numbers of people will die of suicide and other syndromes associated with economic deprivation. This isn't just a guess--it's clear and well-documented. For some reason, these factors seem to be being currently discounted by the Left. I cannot understand why.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  I'm a member of the left and how they've acted during this has turned me off. It's showed me that the left follows their mainstream media narratives just as much as the right follows their mainstream media narratives. No checking of data, no looking at alternatives, no risk of group rejection to say 'hey maybe this is overblown or incorrect or other alternatives exist' It's intellectual laziness to just go with a narrative without questioning it to see if it stands up to scrutiny... and the mainstream media just profits off of the sensationalism so it's not in the business of providing rational level headed analysis.
- merpnderp 6y ago
  How many people will go undiagnosed with heart disease or cancer because hospitals are only seeing emergencies/COVID? Shutting things down has a real and measurable cost and it is going to be massive in terms of lives lost. We didn't all go to work every day for the hell of it.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    How many people already went undiagnosed because they couldn't afford their copays or insurance because of the healthcare system in the US? Now all of a sudden we're reopening the economy for "compassion?"
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > How many people will go undiagnosed with heart disease or cancer because hospitals are only seeing emergencies/COVID? Opening up the economy and letting the virus spread is supposed to help with this? How, exactly?
mindslight 6y ago
Ideology may set rough attractors and no-go areas, but it's naive to think that our current battle lines have been drawn by individuals independently pondering their own positions. At a deep level, our experience of reality has become wholly moderated by mass media. Reds and Blues are watching different channels, and thereby experiencing different realities. It's as simple as that. Nonconformance to a media narrative is punished by all, in a distributed fashion. If you express an independent point in a Blue flavor, you will be attacked by both the ever-present Reds as well fellow Blues for breaking rank (and vice-versa, obviously). Even this comment itself would be better if I tied in some basic examples. But they would inherently reflect my own filter bubble, opening my point up to partisan scrutiny looking to reject self-reflection xor continue caricaturizing the others.
thomascgalvin 6y ago
> First, might conservatives actually be less threatened by the current pandemic? After all, the pandemic has thus far tended to hit more liberal regions, like New York, harder than more conservative regions. And conservative regions that are hard-hit, like Florida, are actively suppressing information on how bad the outbreak is.[1][2] It'll be interesting to see how the conservative narrative changes as the outbreak becomes undeniable. The CDC projections are pointing toward 100,000 dead sometime in June[3]. That's a lot of parents and grandparents. At some point, it will be almost impossible to not be personally affected. [1]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/flor-m01.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/flor-m01.html [2]: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical-examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/ https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medi... [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecas...
mixmastamyk 6y ago
I think the post is on the right track, but fails to even mention the urban/rural divide in the US, which is heavily weighted liberal/conservative. The two groups are experiencing differently—to rural folks describing it as a non-problem is largely accurate, to inner-city liberals the catastrophe is accurate as well. Combine that with a distrust of government in rural areas and you have a pretty solid case. It's clear that attempts at "one size fits all" policy making across a country the size of the US is problematic. States the size of California are also approaching the limits of governability in this situation, see the unrest between different counties.
- watwut 6y ago
  > The two groups are experiencing differently—to rural folks describing it as a hoax is largely accurate, to inner-city liberals a catastrophe is accurate as well. That is not what word hoax means. Hoax means that the thing does not exists at all and is made up. It does not mean "I personally dont have the very same problem yet, therefore I dont believe you when you tell me it is happening".
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    I wasn't done, please don't jump to reply in the first few minutes of writing. ;-)
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    It depends on what you define as _The hoax_, and there is a great diversity of opinions. It can mean the virus doesn't exist It can mean the virus isn't as bad as claimed It can mean the virus mitigations aren't worth the tradeoff
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  > I think the post is on the right track, but fails to even mention the urban/rural divide in the US, which is heavily weighted liberal/conservative. There is a similar trend in Canada, Australia, and to some degree the UK.
- 6y ago
JohnClark1337 6y ago
Conservatives bad

32 points by privong 6y ago

> Note that our results cannot say which of these is happening in greater measure. That's okay. Every reader can figure it out.

lolsal 6y ago
I couldn't; could you help me figure it out?
- dllthomas 6y ago
  It's the other team. My comment was a joke, pointing at my expectation that most readers will come to a conclusion despite the warning.

JamesBarney 6y ago

> Out of six, the strongest effects emerged for goals that involved government-imposed social distancing rules. Conservatives oppose the government telling them when they can or cannot leave their homes; liberals support such policies. Because a threatening disease might validate government interventions that conservatives dislike, conservatives appear motivated to downplay the severity. Or conversely, because a threatening disease might validate government interventions that liberals do like, liberals seem motivated to magnify the threat. Ugh I hate when people do this, it seems like lazy thinking. Decreased government intervention is a terminal goal for many individuals, but increased government intervention is not. Liberals are more willing to trade government intervention for lives saved. > We found that the general effect of ideology on perceived COVID-19 threat significantly decreased at higher levels of experience with COVID-19. Conservatives view the disease as less threatening than liberals, but this difference shrinks among participants who have been more impacted by the disease. Looks like the divide is not entirely different values, and that it's at least partially driven my misinformation. * I know there are probably some liberals for who this is a terminal goal but it's a vanishingly small amount.

Tostino 6y ago
That sounds more likely to me, and completely agreed on the point that increased government for the sake of it has never been a point of conversation for me I can think of with someone who identifies as liberal where they were arguing that more government is the end goal, but there may be specific things they think the government should handle (healthcare). On the reverse, in my experience talking to more conservative people, I have had that topic of "smaller government" come up multiple times. So my anecdotal experiences align with your points pretty well.
floor2 6y ago
> increased government intervention is not Seems like a weird, pedantic half-truth. It's like "I'm not a racist, but ..." except for government. "I don't want increased government intervention... except for the areas of healthcare, housing, education, guns, the economy, free speech, religion, banking, labor, technology and a few dozen other areas, those I do want increased government intervention in". I get that it doesn't come from "I love authoritarianism and want more of it" but the practical end is the same when the solution to every problem is "More government regulations or interventions"
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  For quite a few of the items in your list, the solution from liberals tends to be "Different government regulations" or "Different beneficiaries of government regulations". Which is quite different from more government.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- davidwitt415 6y ago
  It can be seen as a corrective to 'let the free market decide everything,' which is clearly showing its limitations in responding to the COVID-19 crisis.

downerending 6y ago

Interesting, but I think misses a major point: Many conservatives are not apathetic, nor do they feel less threat. Rather, they see a different balance of threats. In particular, shutting down our medical system (ex COVID-19) means that large numbers of people will die of other diseases/conditions. Shutting down the economy means that large numbers of people will die of suicide and other syndromes associated with economic deprivation. This isn't just a guess--it's clear and well-documented. For some reason, these factors seem to be being currently discounted by the Left. I cannot understand why.

nickthemagicman 6y ago
I'm a member of the left and how they've acted during this has turned me off. It's showed me that the left follows their mainstream media narratives just as much as the right follows their mainstream media narratives. No checking of data, no looking at alternatives, no risk of group rejection to say 'hey maybe this is overblown or incorrect or other alternatives exist' It's intellectual laziness to just go with a narrative without questioning it to see if it stands up to scrutiny... and the mainstream media just profits off of the sensationalism so it's not in the business of providing rational level headed analysis.
merpnderp 6y ago
How many people will go undiagnosed with heart disease or cancer because hospitals are only seeing emergencies/COVID? Shutting things down has a real and measurable cost and it is going to be massive in terms of lives lost. We didn't all go to work every day for the hell of it.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  How many people already went undiagnosed because they couldn't afford their copays or insurance because of the healthcare system in the US? Now all of a sudden we're reopening the economy for "compassion?"
- triceratops 6y ago
  > How many people will go undiagnosed with heart disease or cancer because hospitals are only seeing emergencies/COVID? Opening up the economy and letting the virus spread is supposed to help with this? How, exactly?

mindslight 6y ago

Ideology may set rough attractors and no-go areas, but it's naive to think that our current battle lines have been drawn by individuals independently pondering their own positions. At a deep level, our experience of reality has become wholly moderated by mass media. Reds and Blues are watching different channels, and thereby experiencing different realities. It's as simple as that. Nonconformance to a media narrative is punished by all, in a distributed fashion. If you express an independent point in a Blue flavor, you will be attacked by both the ever-present Reds as well fellow Blues for breaking rank (and vice-versa, obviously). Even this comment itself would be better if I tied in some basic examples. But they would inherently reflect my own filter bubble, opening my point up to partisan scrutiny looking to reject self-reflection xor continue caricaturizing the others.

thomascgalvin 6y ago

> First, might conservatives actually be less threatened by the current pandemic? After all, the pandemic has thus far tended to hit more liberal regions, like New York, harder than more conservative regions. And conservative regions that are hard-hit, like Florida, are actively suppressing information on how bad the outbreak is.[1][2] It'll be interesting to see how the conservative narrative changes as the outbreak becomes undeniable. The CDC projections are pointing toward 100,000 dead sometime in June[3]. That's a lot of parents and grandparents. At some point, it will be almost impossible to not be personally affected. [1]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/flor-m01.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/flor-m01.html [2]: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical-examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/ https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medi... [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecas...

mixmastamyk 6y ago

I think the post is on the right track, but fails to even mention the urban/rural divide in the US, which is heavily weighted liberal/conservative. The two groups are experiencing differently—to rural folks describing it as a non-problem is largely accurate, to inner-city liberals the catastrophe is accurate as well. Combine that with a distrust of government in rural areas and you have a pretty solid case. It's clear that attempts at "one size fits all" policy making across a country the size of the US is problematic. States the size of California are also approaching the limits of governability in this situation, see the unrest between different counties.

watwut 6y ago
> The two groups are experiencing differently—to rural folks describing it as a hoax is largely accurate, to inner-city liberals a catastrophe is accurate as well. That is not what word hoax means. Hoax means that the thing does not exists at all and is made up. It does not mean "I personally dont have the very same problem yet, therefore I dont believe you when you tell me it is happening".
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  I wasn't done, please don't jump to reply in the first few minutes of writing. ;-)
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  It depends on what you define as _The hoax_, and there is a great diversity of opinions. It can mean the virus doesn't exist It can mean the virus isn't as bad as claimed It can mean the virus mitigations aren't worth the tradeoff
blaser-waffle 6y ago
> I think the post is on the right track, but fails to even mention the urban/rural divide in the US, which is heavily weighted liberal/conservative. There is a similar trend in Canada, Australia, and to some degree the UK.
6y ago

JohnClark1337 6y ago

Conservatives bad