Think like an engineer. First job of a policy designer in a democracy is perception shaping. For example, in a poll from Dec 2020, perception of covid hospitali

Think like an engineer. First job of a policy designer in a democracy is perception shaping. For example, in a poll from Dec 2020, perception of covid hospitalization rates in <24 age group was about 8%, vs. reality 0.1%. For general population, hospitalization rates were estimated over 50% by a third of the population, with another quarter estimating 20-49%. Reality: 1-5%. As of and example of practical techniques, I saved once an APNews article: > Virus surge breaks hospital records amid rising toll on kids The implication that our brain makes is that kids are getting into hospital in record numbers because of covid. The actual story has loosely related 3 parts: 1. That adult hospitals are getting filled, in a couple of states. 2. That the share of covid cases in kids out of covid cases in all age groups is growing in a couple different states. 3. An anecdote that somebody had some covid patients as young as 16 in some hospital (selection bias alert). If you are a parent and only skimmed the article, you saw 'hospitals ... 17% ... children and teens ... DELTA'. Your heart is racing. You are thinking that a double digit percent of kids end up in the hospital with a covid case. You end up overestimating the impact of covid in kids by a factor of 100. Masks? YES Vaccines? YES Lockdowns? YES Vaccine passports? YES YES YES PLEASE MAKE IT STOP. https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-misinformation-is-distorting-covid-policies-and-behaviors https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-misinformation-is-dis... https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-1766777633776b9490d1db6879cfb6ce https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-17667...