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> Fourth, we document a gradual but continuous decrease in respondents’ overall willingness to sacrifice rights and freedom, throughout March to mid-June of 202

by umvi 6y ago

> Fourth, we document a gradual but continuous decrease in respondents’ overall willingness to sacrifice rights and freedom, throughout March to mid-June of 2020 ... Such declines are accompanied by a decrease in expressed worries on health and economic conditions I wonder if this is simply because there is a mismatch between what people are being told and what people are observing with their own eyes. If, instead of covid, it were a plague with 50% death rate... I doubt people would be having as much "lockdown fatigue" since they would literally see the bodies piling up in their communities. Instead you have a disease that only mildly affects the majority, putting only small minorities in real danger, which doesn't jive with the "sky is falling" stories the media/government peddles. One parallel to this finding would be climate change, of course. There's a danger in preaching that the sky is falling in that if people can't see the sky falling with their own eyes, they are going to get "climate fatigue" followed by "a decrease in expressed worries on [climate] conditions".

leetcrew 6y ago
> I wonder if this is simply because there is a mismatch between what people are being told and what people are observing with their own eyes. when in doubt, "humans don't intuitively understand exponential growth" is often a good guess. to the average person, "barely under control" and "everything is fine" look very similar and the precautions taken in the former seem pretty silly. by the time an outbreak is directly observable in your day-to-day life, things have already gone sideways.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Your parent comment was talking about how mild the virus is for most people who get it, not about how many cases there are. So I don’t think the growth rate is relevant.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >Your parent comment was talking about how mild the virus is for most people who get it, not about how many cases there are. So I don’t think the growth rate is relevant. An interesting point. However, I'd posit that the growth rate is of paramount importance -- not because many will have mild symptoms, but because a small portion of those who contract COVID-19 will die or have serious long-term effects. As the number of cases grow, the number of folks who die/suffer serious long-term effects will grow along with them.
    - umanwizard 6y ago
      Yes, but the same is true of literally every common disease.
      - PeterisP 6y ago
        Literally every other common disease is either saturated to a somewhat stable level, or eliminated or on the way there because of some vaccine. Sadly, there are some countries where HIV is still rapidly expanding, but in aggregate even that is shrinking. Currently covid-19 is the only epidemic that's large but still actively growing worldwide, it's the only one where we actually would see exponential growth if we do nothing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
nineplay 6y ago
> I wonder if this is simply because there is a mismatch between what people are being told and what people are observing with their own eyes. This has been my experience with people who want to open things back up. They're getting together with friends, they've been going to visit family, they've gotten their kids back in school, and no one has gotten sick. They think the rest of us are being ridiculous. I almost feel like its the elephant in the room. No official has come out and said "I understand why these policies look like overkill, but if things go bad they will go bad quickly". Now the reason no official has said that is because they think people will hear the first part and discard the last part, but it's exacerbating the mistrust people already have about our government response. I will say that I'm personally finding it hard, and I fall into cycles of wondering if the sacrifices I've made a are worth it. Family members are getting older and we've probably missed out on 4-5 visits we would have had any other year, plus we're facing the possibility of seeing no one over Thanksgiving and Christmas.
- eternalban 6y ago
  The changes being forced, such as Health Passports, and other related matter, are not temporary in nature. “Overkill” in temporary measures would be understandable. Overkill is not an accurate characterization of a prematurely announced “new normal” that (amazingly) 100% adheres to socio-political “visions for future” by the unelected and possibly too rich.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    You live up to your name, eternalban
    - eternalban 6y ago
      That is not my name, it’s a handle. (And you have no idea whatsoever where the ban is issued. HN is just a website..)
  - three_legs 6y ago
    I'm curious to those who disagree with the parent why, or what exactly they find is inaccurate about their statements. "A permanent solution to a temporary problem" is a government's most practiced response.
nobody9999 6y ago
>If, instead of covid, it were a plague with 50% death rate... I doubt people would be having as much "lockdown fatigue" since they would literally see the bodies piling up in their communities. Instead you have a disease that only mildly affects the majority, putting only small minorities in real danger, which doesn't jive with the "sky is falling" stories the media/government peddles. I don't know about you, but living in NYC, we did "literally see the bodies piling up" in March and April. While the number of deaths was small compared to the overall population of NYC, the fact that morgues were so overwhelmed that refrigerated trucks were required to hold the excess corpses told me that this was a dangerous disease and needed to be taken seriously. Out of curiosity, if 200,000+ deaths in the US doesn't constitute something serious and worthy of attention and efforts to mitigate/minimize the impact of COVID-19, how many deaths would make you change your mind? 1,000,000? 5,000,000?
- wincy 6y ago
  The vast majority of people don’t internalize statistics at all. They go by experiences. So someone they are close to going from healthy and then suddenly falling ill and dying would be what gets people to pay attention. My 82 year old diabetic grandmother who had a quadruple bypass surgery said “if I die I die, and I’ll follow the rules and wear a mask if they tell me to”, this is a died in the wool Democrat of a woman. The only thing she has seen personally was her ex-husband dying alone in the old folks home because visitation was disallowed. He didn’t get COVID, he died of loneliness, as far as she could tell. So she’s going out to social engagements because she thinks the cure is worse than the disease.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    The big problems with just "listen to the experts" is we've never actually been in this situation, and it depends which type of expert you talk to. Talk to an epidemiologist and you'll get an idea of how a compliant society can stop the disease. Talk to an economist and you'll hear how to minimize economic impact. Talk to a psychologist and you'll hear about mental health, compliance, fatigue. Talk to a political scientist and you might hear about China making a move on Hong Kong. This is a complex system, and there aren't really systemic experts.
StavrosK 6y ago
I don't know why people are easily willing to sacrifice their rights to curtail "terrorism" that has killed fewer people than lightning strikes, but with a pandemic with hundreds of thousands of deaths is "you can't take my freedom".
- bumby 6y ago
  I suspect it has to do with the visibility how much those rights affect their day-to-day lives. Most people notice very little, if at all, when privacy rights are breached in the name of fighting terrorism. Even protocols like those of the TSA are only witnessed occasionally. However, people quickly notice when their workplace, or local pub or park, are shut down because it affects them on a daily basis.
- mcv 6y ago
  Because there was far more fear mongering around terrorism, it was unpatriotic to claim it wasn't such a big deal, and there was more property damage. Maybe it's the property damage that really makes it different in the eyes of many people. People die from all sorts of causes, but skyscrapers don't just collapse. It makes it more real, I guess. Also: a clearer group of people to blame for it.
- cal5k 6y ago
  Neither is a good excuse to curtail civil liberties. And, frankly, I doubt terrorism would have the same psychological impact if it mostly targeted people in long-term care facilities with serious pre-existing health issues.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
aqme28 6y ago
> If, instead of covid, it were a plague with 50% death rate... I doubt people would be having as much "lockdown fatigue" since they would literally see the bodies piling up in their communities. In a way, I doubt it. Our society takes deliberate steps to hide the sick from public view. That's good in a lot of ways, but one problem is that most people don't get to see the effects that Covid had. I have enough nurses in my family to know that this is a serious disease.
jcims 6y ago
Death is one thing. If you want society to really care about the pandemic, link it to erectile dysfunction. Dudes will be walking around in scuba gear.
dfxm12 6y ago
I wonder if this is simply because there is a mismatch between what people are being told and what people are observing with their own eyes. What are people being told? The US federal government, media outlets friendly to them and some local governments seem to undermine the WHO, CDC, NIAID, etc. every chance they get.
diob 6y ago
It's also one of those things where if you succeed in staving off disaster, folks think you overreacted.
- mcguire 6y ago
  I agree. This is an animation that was posted to /r/dataisbeautiful a few days ago. Watch California compared to New York, the east coast, and then the midwest. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/jdffl5/oc_animation_showing_the_number_of_covid19_deaths/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/jdffl5/oc_... I'm going to suggest that California's success is pretty good (and that factor is related to the prevalence of "overreacted" comments here).
z3ncyberpunk 6y ago
You have an engineered virus that wasn't finished being engineered.. ftfy

by umvi 6y ago

leetcrew 6y ago

> I wonder if this is simply because there is a mismatch between what people are being told and what people are observing with their own eyes. when in doubt, "humans don't intuitively understand exponential growth" is often a good guess. to the average person, "barely under control" and "everything is fine" look very similar and the precautions taken in the former seem pretty silly. by the time an outbreak is directly observable in your day-to-day life, things have already gone sideways.

umanwizard 6y ago
Your parent comment was talking about how mild the virus is for most people who get it, not about how many cases there are. So I don’t think the growth rate is relevant.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >Your parent comment was talking about how mild the virus is for most people who get it, not about how many cases there are. So I don’t think the growth rate is relevant. An interesting point. However, I'd posit that the growth rate is of paramount importance -- not because many will have mild symptoms, but because a small portion of those who contract COVID-19 will die or have serious long-term effects. As the number of cases grow, the number of folks who die/suffer serious long-term effects will grow along with them.
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    Yes, but the same is true of literally every common disease.
    - PeterisP 6y ago
      Literally every other common disease is either saturated to a somewhat stable level, or eliminated or on the way there because of some vaccine. Sadly, there are some countries where HIV is still rapidly expanding, but in aggregate even that is shrinking. Currently covid-19 is the only epidemic that's large but still actively growing worldwide, it's the only one where we actually would see exponential growth if we do nothing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

nineplay 6y ago

> I wonder if this is simply because there is a mismatch between what people are being told and what people are observing with their own eyes. This has been my experience with people who want to open things back up. They're getting together with friends, they've been going to visit family, they've gotten their kids back in school, and no one has gotten sick. They think the rest of us are being ridiculous. I almost feel like its the elephant in the room. No official has come out and said "I understand why these policies look like overkill, but if things go bad they will go bad quickly". Now the reason no official has said that is because they think people will hear the first part and discard the last part, but it's exacerbating the mistrust people already have about our government response. I will say that I'm personally finding it hard, and I fall into cycles of wondering if the sacrifices I've made a are worth it. Family members are getting older and we've probably missed out on 4-5 visits we would have had any other year, plus we're facing the possibility of seeing no one over Thanksgiving and Christmas.

eternalban 6y ago
The changes being forced, such as Health Passports, and other related matter, are not temporary in nature. “Overkill” in temporary measures would be understandable. Overkill is not an accurate characterization of a prematurely announced “new normal” that (amazingly) 100% adheres to socio-political “visions for future” by the unelected and possibly too rich.
- adamsea 6y ago
  You live up to your name, eternalban
  - eternalban 6y ago
    That is not my name, it’s a handle. (And you have no idea whatsoever where the ban is issued. HN is just a website..)
- three_legs 6y ago
  I'm curious to those who disagree with the parent why, or what exactly they find is inaccurate about their statements. "A permanent solution to a temporary problem" is a government's most practiced response.

nobody9999 6y ago

>If, instead of covid, it were a plague with 50% death rate... I doubt people would be having as much "lockdown fatigue" since they would literally see the bodies piling up in their communities. Instead you have a disease that only mildly affects the majority, putting only small minorities in real danger, which doesn't jive with the "sky is falling" stories the media/government peddles. I don't know about you, but living in NYC, we did "literally see the bodies piling up" in March and April. While the number of deaths was small compared to the overall population of NYC, the fact that morgues were so overwhelmed that refrigerated trucks were required to hold the excess corpses told me that this was a dangerous disease and needed to be taken seriously. Out of curiosity, if 200,000+ deaths in the US doesn't constitute something serious and worthy of attention and efforts to mitigate/minimize the impact of COVID-19, how many deaths would make you change your mind? 1,000,000? 5,000,000?

wincy 6y ago
The vast majority of people don’t internalize statistics at all. They go by experiences. So someone they are close to going from healthy and then suddenly falling ill and dying would be what gets people to pay attention. My 82 year old diabetic grandmother who had a quadruple bypass surgery said “if I die I die, and I’ll follow the rules and wear a mask if they tell me to”, this is a died in the wool Democrat of a woman. The only thing she has seen personally was her ex-husband dying alone in the old folks home because visitation was disallowed. He didn’t get COVID, he died of loneliness, as far as she could tell. So she’s going out to social engagements because she thinks the cure is worse than the disease.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  The big problems with just "listen to the experts" is we've never actually been in this situation, and it depends which type of expert you talk to. Talk to an epidemiologist and you'll get an idea of how a compliant society can stop the disease. Talk to an economist and you'll hear how to minimize economic impact. Talk to a psychologist and you'll hear about mental health, compliance, fatigue. Talk to a political scientist and you might hear about China making a move on Hong Kong. This is a complex system, and there aren't really systemic experts.

StavrosK 6y ago

I don't know why people are easily willing to sacrifice their rights to curtail "terrorism" that has killed fewer people than lightning strikes, but with a pandemic with hundreds of thousands of deaths is "you can't take my freedom".

bumby 6y ago
I suspect it has to do with the visibility how much those rights affect their day-to-day lives. Most people notice very little, if at all, when privacy rights are breached in the name of fighting terrorism. Even protocols like those of the TSA are only witnessed occasionally. However, people quickly notice when their workplace, or local pub or park, are shut down because it affects them on a daily basis.
mcv 6y ago
Because there was far more fear mongering around terrorism, it was unpatriotic to claim it wasn't such a big deal, and there was more property damage. Maybe it's the property damage that really makes it different in the eyes of many people. People die from all sorts of causes, but skyscrapers don't just collapse. It makes it more real, I guess. Also: a clearer group of people to blame for it.
cal5k 6y ago
Neither is a good excuse to curtail civil liberties. And, frankly, I doubt terrorism would have the same psychological impact if it mostly targeted people in long-term care facilities with serious pre-existing health issues.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

aqme28 6y ago

> If, instead of covid, it were a plague with 50% death rate... I doubt people would be having as much "lockdown fatigue" since they would literally see the bodies piling up in their communities. In a way, I doubt it. Our society takes deliberate steps to hide the sick from public view. That's good in a lot of ways, but one problem is that most people don't get to see the effects that Covid had. I have enough nurses in my family to know that this is a serious disease.

jcims 6y ago

Death is one thing. If you want society to really care about the pandemic, link it to erectile dysfunction. Dudes will be walking around in scuba gear.

dfxm12 6y ago

I wonder if this is simply because there is a mismatch between what people are being told and what people are observing with their own eyes. What are people being told? The US federal government, media outlets friendly to them and some local governments seem to undermine the WHO, CDC, NIAID, etc. every chance they get.

diob 6y ago

It's also one of those things where if you succeed in staving off disaster, folks think you overreacted.

mcguire 6y ago
I agree. This is an animation that was posted to /r/dataisbeautiful a few days ago. Watch California compared to New York, the east coast, and then the midwest. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/jdffl5/oc_animation_showing_the_number_of_covid19_deaths/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/jdffl5/oc_... I'm going to suggest that California's success is pretty good (and that factor is related to the prevalence of "overreacted" comments here).

z3ncyberpunk 6y ago

You have an engineered virus that wasn't finished being engineered.. ftfy