>It’s such a basic concept that a child would have the solution, and you need to do mental gymnastics to convince yourself otherwise. Mental gymnastics are pre

>It’s such a basic concept that a child would have the solution, and you need to do mental gymnastics to convince yourself otherwise. Mental gymnastics are precisely what's happening. When confronted with an uncontrollable horror, people generally have one of two possible reactions. The first is to accept it, and do what you can logically to minimize the risk, but to then live in perpetual fear and anxiety. The second is to begin rationalizing the problem itself away, as a defense mechanism to the anxiety and fear, and flocking to others who have made the same choice to mutually affirm each other and make themselves feel better. I don't really think there's a correlation between general intelligence and which one of those two people gravitate towards. It's an emotional response that has a lot more to do with personality types. You see it in everything, not just with COVID. It's the same divide that exists between religious/non-religious.