4 ms·

I think there's a fallacy here in that "because covid's impact wasn't great, covid wasn't that bad." Any time we have to mobilize a lot of effort to head off th

by madrox 4y ago

I think there's a fallacy here in that "because covid's impact wasn't great, covid wasn't that bad." Any time we have to mobilize a lot of effort to head off the worst outcome, there's a tendency to say "well nothing really bad happened, so why did we go through all that effort?" Let's not trivialize the global effort necessary to bring us to 1/10th the death toll. It absolutely could've been worse. It's our response to covid, not covid itself, that taught me a lot of what we're capable of in global crisis. We've come a long way since Spanish Flu.

belter 4y ago
Let's also not take too much of a Western perspective, as only 16.2% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
kinleyd 4y ago
Well said. I think if the vaccines hadn't come out at all, it could well have been as bad as the Spanish Flu.
- tasuki 4y ago
  > I think if the vaccines hadn't come out at all, it could well have been as bad as the Spanish Flu. I'm very much for vaccines, but this is just not true at all. Covid was never going to be near as bad as the Spanish flu, even if no measures were taken at all.
dijit 4y ago
Reminds me of the millennium bug. Everyone worked really hard to make the impact minimal, now people assume that it wasn’t that big a deal.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Is there a name for the fallacy you commited here - assuming it must have been a big deal, which was necessarily minimized by the effort? It's a case of: -- Why do you spend all these millions putting these plastic scarecrows all across Nebraska? -- They keep sharks away. -- But Nebraska doesn't have sharks! -- Exactly! See how effective it is?
  - dijit 4y ago
    It would seem to be a kind of variant on the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (after this, therefore because of this) fallacy — if one thing follows another the second must have been caused by the first. Only in this case you are looking at denials where “propter hoc” actually holds — the second thing really was caused by the first. There really should be a catchy name for this, since it permeates a lot of political reasoning on topics such as remediation for ozone hole depletion, FDC regulations, environmental regulations, etc. People see that timely action averted a problem, but somehow take that as evidence that there wasn’t a problem in the first place.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      >People see that timely action averted a problem, but somehow take that as evidence that there wasn’t a problem in the first place. Depending on the situation, 2 cases are possible (and have happened): (a) A thing was indeed about to become a grave problem and timely action prevented it. (b) A thing was never to become a big issue, and all the action spent preventing it didn't have any significance. In both cases the outcome is "thing didn't become a big problem". But in (a) action is what helped with this, and in (b) action was irrelevant and wasted. Now some people see the outcome (no issue) and think that action was wasted. That's accurate in (a) and wrong in (b). My point is that whether "timely action averted a problem" or "the problem was oversold to begin with" is something to be argued and proved, not taken for granted.
      - dijit 4y ago
        We know it could have been a big problem by the small things that got omitted and became problems. You can argue that we didn’t need to pump hundreds of millions into it; but it is a fact that there would have been a crisis had it not been actively averted. The same issue exists now with 2048 and we’re already seeing problems (on things that date far into the future) and we will likely need to expend effort and energy in avoiding this issue: especially on embedded devices. If you’re denying that there would have been a problem then I’m afraid you’re simply mistaken. I could give you many citations if I wasn’t on my phone. There was even a documentary about it. “Was the millennium bug a myth” or something.
coryrc 4y ago
> there's a tendency to say "well nothing really bad happened, so why did we go through all that effort? Basically a third of our country didn't go through that effort and the country is mostly still chugging along. Were it much deadlier, things would not have turned out okay.
- Grim-444 4y ago
  This is a weird argument to make. The rational thing is to make different decisions in different scenarios. The choices I would make for how/whether to participate in society, whether to take a vaccine, etc., would vary greatly depending on whether a given disease has a 1 in 50,000 chance of killing me vs if it's like something out of the movie Contagion that would have a 1 in 10 chance of killing me. If covid had a 1 in 10 chance of killing me I would have made very different decisions over the course of the pandemic. You're saying that people would still behave the same as they did during covid no matter how deadly a given disease is, which seems pretty ridiculous.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cableshaft 4y ago
  My state took it just seriously enough to get us to vaccines (and even before that, buy some time until they realized they shouldn't just put everyone on a respirator). For all I know it may have saved my life and the life of several other people I know with comorbidities. Possibly my parents as well. Yes, a third of the country didn't go through the effort and a lot of people died in those states also. The country might still be functioning, but not necessarily well, with significant labor shortages, supply chain issues, high inflation, a looming recession, record high gas prices, etc. (not all of that is directly because of the pandemic, granted, but it sure didn't help).
  - coryrc 4y ago
    I think we're in violent agreement.
- kaba0 4y ago
coldtea 4y ago
>Let's not trivialize the global effort necessary to bring us to 1/10th the death toll. It absolutely could've been worse. I'm not so sure, given places that did nothing or not much (either out of policy or lack of resources) and still didn't have a toll anywhere comparable to the Spanish Flu (and more or less comparable to places that took "great effort", if not better).

by madrox 4y ago

belter 4y ago

Let's also not take too much of a Western perspective, as only 16.2% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

kinleyd 4y ago

Well said. I think if the vaccines hadn't come out at all, it could well have been as bad as the Spanish Flu.

tasuki 4y ago
> I think if the vaccines hadn't come out at all, it could well have been as bad as the Spanish Flu. I'm very much for vaccines, but this is just not true at all. Covid was never going to be near as bad as the Spanish flu, even if no measures were taken at all.

dijit 4y ago

Reminds me of the millennium bug. Everyone worked really hard to make the impact minimal, now people assume that it wasn’t that big a deal.

coldtea 4y ago
Is there a name for the fallacy you commited here - assuming it must have been a big deal, which was necessarily minimized by the effort? It's a case of: -- Why do you spend all these millions putting these plastic scarecrows all across Nebraska? -- They keep sharks away. -- But Nebraska doesn't have sharks! -- Exactly! See how effective it is?
- dijit 4y ago
  It would seem to be a kind of variant on the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (after this, therefore because of this) fallacy — if one thing follows another the second must have been caused by the first. Only in this case you are looking at denials where “propter hoc” actually holds — the second thing really was caused by the first. There really should be a catchy name for this, since it permeates a lot of political reasoning on topics such as remediation for ozone hole depletion, FDC regulations, environmental regulations, etc. People see that timely action averted a problem, but somehow take that as evidence that there wasn’t a problem in the first place.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >People see that timely action averted a problem, but somehow take that as evidence that there wasn’t a problem in the first place. Depending on the situation, 2 cases are possible (and have happened): (a) A thing was indeed about to become a grave problem and timely action prevented it. (b) A thing was never to become a big issue, and all the action spent preventing it didn't have any significance. In both cases the outcome is "thing didn't become a big problem". But in (a) action is what helped with this, and in (b) action was irrelevant and wasted. Now some people see the outcome (no issue) and think that action was wasted. That's accurate in (a) and wrong in (b). My point is that whether "timely action averted a problem" or "the problem was oversold to begin with" is something to be argued and proved, not taken for granted.
    - dijit 4y ago
      We know it could have been a big problem by the small things that got omitted and became problems. You can argue that we didn’t need to pump hundreds of millions into it; but it is a fact that there would have been a crisis had it not been actively averted. The same issue exists now with 2048 and we’re already seeing problems (on things that date far into the future) and we will likely need to expend effort and energy in avoiding this issue: especially on embedded devices. If you’re denying that there would have been a problem then I’m afraid you’re simply mistaken. I could give you many citations if I wasn’t on my phone. There was even a documentary about it. “Was the millennium bug a myth” or something.

coryrc 4y ago

> there's a tendency to say "well nothing really bad happened, so why did we go through all that effort? Basically a third of our country didn't go through that effort and the country is mostly still chugging along. Were it much deadlier, things would not have turned out okay.

Grim-444 4y ago
This is a weird argument to make. The rational thing is to make different decisions in different scenarios. The choices I would make for how/whether to participate in society, whether to take a vaccine, etc., would vary greatly depending on whether a given disease has a 1 in 50,000 chance of killing me vs if it's like something out of the movie Contagion that would have a 1 in 10 chance of killing me. If covid had a 1 in 10 chance of killing me I would have made very different decisions over the course of the pandemic. You're saying that people would still behave the same as they did during covid no matter how deadly a given disease is, which seems pretty ridiculous.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cableshaft 4y ago
My state took it just seriously enough to get us to vaccines (and even before that, buy some time until they realized they shouldn't just put everyone on a respirator). For all I know it may have saved my life and the life of several other people I know with comorbidities. Possibly my parents as well. Yes, a third of the country didn't go through the effort and a lot of people died in those states also. The country might still be functioning, but not necessarily well, with significant labor shortages, supply chain issues, high inflation, a looming recession, record high gas prices, etc. (not all of that is directly because of the pandemic, granted, but it sure didn't help).
- coryrc 4y ago
  I think we're in violent agreement.
kaba0 4y ago

coldtea 4y ago

>Let's not trivialize the global effort necessary to bring us to 1/10th the death toll. It absolutely could've been worse. I'm not so sure, given places that did nothing or not much (either out of policy or lack of resources) and still didn't have a toll anywhere comparable to the Spanish Flu (and more or less comparable to places that took "great effort", if not better).