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Yeah, that take seems to be making the rounds in the tech community right now. It's probably wrong in a number of ways, though. The new variant overtaking the
by IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Yeah, that take seems to be making the rounds in the tech community right now.
It's probably wrong in a number of ways, though. The new variant overtaking the UK may cause 10 times as many deaths in the first months if it's really 50 % more infectious (the magic of compound interest).
Are people going to adequately react to such a change in risk? I have my doubts. This isn't even meant as a cynical indictment of humanity: I myself currently behave more less exactly as I did during the summer, even though local infection rates have changed by two orders of magnitude in the meantime.
- doliveira 6y agoYeah, probably wishful thinking to think that there would be a threshold of fatality rate beyond which any politicization would be impossible. I do think it would be harder, though, and it would likely involve less literally pro-plague attitudes
- cartoonfoxes 6y ago>Are people going to adequately react to such a change in risk? Reactions track with the perception of danger, not risk. We would all behave differently if the danger was a flesh-eating hemorrhagic zombie virus, rather than moderate-to-severe flu symptoms, even if the risk was unchanged.