9 ms·

There's some kind of logical fallacy in this line of argument, but I can't put my finger on a name for it. It's situations where the emotional terror of acute

There's some kind of logical fallacy in this line of argument, but I can't put my finger on a name for it. It's situations where the emotional terror of acute risks forces you to default to a behavior that has less tractable, long term, systemic risks. Mitigating the acute risks is too expensive, so instead, you accept being the frog boiled alive because long term risks are harder to quantify and more nebulously terrifying. You're terrified of a nuclear meltdown, so instead you subject global civilization to decades of unnecessary fossil fuel burning. A nuclear meltdown that kills hundreds or thousands is terrifying, but coal burning that quietly kills millions from air pollution is silent. Other examples... * When you're terrified of Covid, so you suspend most of your activities and spend two years mostly staying home, gaining 50 pounds and decimating your fitness which drastically increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and overall significantly increasing your likelihood of dying young far in excess of the acute risk that Covid actually posed to your demographic. * When we're so scared as a society of the Covid death spike that we stunt the social and educational development of children by years, which is potentially unrecoverable. * When a small group of religious radicals kill 3000 people in a fantastical way, so you set yourself on a trillion dollar war to lose thousands more of your young people to combat deaths and directly and indirectly kill hundreds of thousands of poor foreigners, coming away not practically any safer than the basic changes to airline security policies would have done for a fraction of the dollar and human life costs.

woodruffw 4y ago
The key distinction here is that the (low!) long-term risk of nuclear power is well quantified, while COVID represents an unknown long-term risk.
- sdsaga12 4y ago
  Isn't this true of all new strains of all contagious pathogens? They are constantly undergoing change. We estimate low probability that mutated viruses or bacteria descended from strains we are familiar with will have dramatically more harmful long-term effects, but we don't actually know for certain that any given year's new strains won't have very different risk profiles until much later. We can make probabilistic models based on historical data, but they are unavoidably vulnerable to underestimating the risk of black swan events. One could argue that certain features of covid make it riskier with regard to long-term effects, but that is not a proposition that is well developed in the public conversation, especially by proponents of the zoonosis hypothesis. The lab origin hypothesis with its accompanying assumptions of serial passage and direct gene modification would in my eyes strengthen the case that covid's long-term effects were less likely to conform to historical data on other viral infections, though interestingly the intersection of those who find the lab origin more convincing with those who have serious concerns about long-term harms is a pretty small set.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    > Isn't this true of all new strains of all contagious pathogens? Yes. The distinguishing factor there is that most new strains do not kill millions of people within the first year or two of discovery. Compare, for example, the H1N1 variant that caused the 2009 flu pandemic, which killed "only" around 300,000 people (based on best excess death estimates). > One could argue that certain features of covid make it riskier with regard to long-term effects, but that is not a proposition that is well developed in the public conversation, especially by proponents of the zoonosis hypothesis. This has long been an established part of the messaging: we're more or less confident that short term effects to young, otherwise healthy individuals are minor. The guidance has still been to avoid infection, because we're not confident that mild short term guarantee or protect against serious long term effects. Chickenpox (and subsequently shingles) exemplify this. I understand the intuition that a non-zoonotic origin would lend credence to the possibility of long term risks, but I don't think the epidemiology actually supports the intuition: my understanding is that viruses that jump the species gap tend to have higher variability in terms of their harm to the new species.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    I've noticed the same strange misaligned covid explanation/behavior. Lab leak would make me more fearful of the virus itself, pure zoonotic origin and I say Jesus take the wheel and by that I mean countless generations of evolution tuning my immune system against similar virus for familial survival take the wheel.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      This mis-states the relationship between your immune system and novel viruses, especially ones that cross species boundaries. Viruses adapt to avoid the adjustments the immune system makes, and zoonotic transmission means that your immune system is "seeing" all kinds of novel adaptations for the first time.
pydry 4y ago
>You're terrified of a nuclear meltdown, so instead you subject global civilization to decades of unnecessary fossil fuel burning. It's kind of fair enough to be afraid with a chances of meltdown projected at 1/3704 reactor years: https://lemielleux.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-nuclear-power-plant-meltdown/ https://lemielleux.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-nuclear-pow... Those odds are why not a single insurance company will insure a nuclear reactor for more than 0.3% the cost of a nuclear disaster. Speaking of fallacies, your argument squarely falls under the false dilemma fallacy. Nuclear is not the only form of green energy. In fact it is by far the most expensive one as well as the only one that imparts a small chance of catastrophe. It isnt needed to provide reliable power either. Wind, solar, pumped storage, batteries and demand shaping can, together, do it cheaper: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3539703-no-miracle-tech-needed-how-to-switch-to-renewables-now-and-lower-costs-doing-it/ https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3539703-no-mi... https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-worldwide https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potent...
- p1mrx 4y ago
  > chances of meltdown projected at 1/3704 reactor years That is for existing reactors. The point of new designs is to do better: "The likelihood of core damage due to NuScale reactor equipment failures while at full power conditions is 1 event per module every ~3 Billion Years." https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety-features/emergency-planning-zone https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety-features/emerge...
  - pydry 4y ago
    And I'll believe it once the price-anderson cap is eliminated and they can still buy insurance. Otherwise it's all talk. Manufacturers will always claim on that their product is 99.9% safe. The closest realistic measure is how much financial liability their insurer is willing to shoulder and at what cost. Which is still capped at 0.03% of 1 fukushima in the US because the government thinks pushing it any higher would spook them.
    - 4y ago
serf 4y ago
to be clear : the events of 9/11 were the impetus for war; not the motivation. that trillion estimate, one of the lower ones by the way, is a cost figure without the associated profits and revenue. As horrible as it is and was, the 'military industrial complex', as a whole, profited incredibly -- this 'trickled down', a phrase I hate to use , all across the United States in the form of jobs from market players and call-for-bids across the nation to fill in niche topics (like airport security, for example) that were otherwise un-worked beforehand. Another aside : the proof that airport security has changed anything for the better is scant at best, and corrupt at worst. tl;dr : if you think any of the wars in the middle east were fought for the sake of 'American Safety', whatever that might be, then you're just not paying enough attention.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  I mean, a trillion spent is a trillion spent: it'll trickle down regardless of how you spend it, the question is if you could have spent it some other way that would have given more jobs?
  - namdnay 4y ago
    It was Bush - if it hadn’t been spent on Iraq it would have gone straight to tax cuts for the upper brackets. We’re talking about the guy who managed to tank the worlds healthiest budget
    - MisterMower 4y ago
      I thought we were talking a miniature nuclear reactor…
  - Jenk 4y ago
    Not if it is stashed away secretly avoiding tax and other contributions to society. https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/23/super-rich-hide-21-trillion-offshore-study-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/23/super...
  - patmcc 4y ago
majormajor 4y ago
> * When we're so scared as a society of the Covid death spike that we stunt the social and educational development of children by years, which is potentially unrecoverable. This sounds a lot like "we should ignore warnings about pollution because the cost of moving away from fossil fuels would be too expensive," actually. Picking such an open-ended thing like this really undermines your point here. You want people's Covid-prompted behaviors (exaggerated into stuff like "two years mostly staying home, gaining 50 pounds") to be compared to "fear of nuclear meltdown." But you can't substantiate those long-term risks in anything like the same way we can those of burning coal at this point. Is Covid more "potentially unrecoverable" for kids and young adults than themselves or family members being drafted for a world war and dying en masse? Than school shootings that we tolerate for vague "protect our liberty" talk?
- MisterMower 4y ago
  Show your work, do the cost justification, and make your assumptions explicit. Until either of you do that, you’re just guessing.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect someone to do that work, or even have the tools or data sources to do that work. Sure, I think it's reasonable to expect people to provide sources to support ideas when possible, but it's a little unreasonable to expect people to do extensive first-party research to support their opinions. I think there's value in the discussion either way. Most of the time I don't think we're going to change people's minds with this sort of discussion, but I do enjoy seeing what people's positions are on these sorts of topics, and find that I learn things from it.
    - MisterMower 4y ago
      If they’re unwilling to do the work, then they should stop pretending to be certain that their opinion is correct.
iforgotpassword 4y ago
> It's situations where the emotional terror of acute risks forces you to default to a behavior that has less tractable, long term, systemic risks. Good thing nuclear doesn't produce hazardous waste we need to store safely for thousands of years. That would be a pretty horrible, long term risk. But OTOH who gives a fsck about generations to come, storing the waste safely while I'm still alive should be doable.
- JoshTriplett 4y ago
  So, instead of nuclear waste we can package up and store away where it won't hurt anyone, we have plenty of coal and gas plants, whose waste goes into the atmosphere where it hurts everyone.
  - iforgotpassword 4y ago
    But we can't! There have been several issues with stored nuclear waste already, and we only had to do it for like what, 70 years? How can you project that to even just a couple hundred years and not expect total desaster? nuclear would be great if every single person involved were reliable, diligent engineers and scientists. But at the end of the day, the most important decisions always get made by greedy managers and CEOs, and clueless politicians.
    - e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
      I’ve never understood why just storing them in a big pool next to the power plant is a bad idea. The radiation is not a concern because the water filters it all out, it’s stable for long periods of time with very little maintenance, what’s the downside exactly? As in literally dig a hole the size of an Olympic swimming pool, store literally all the nuclear waste that has ever been produced (maybe you’ll need a few pools, I haven’t checked), and spend a few million a year maintaining it for the next century or so.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Jenk 4y ago
> When you're terrified of Covid, so you suspend most of your activities and spend two years mostly staying home, gaining 50 pounds and decimating your fitness which drastically increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and overall significantly increasing your likelihood of dying young far in excess of the acute risk that Covid actually posed to your demographic. This example (that I suspect you shoe-horned in to rant) undermines, but also fully demonstrates, your entire point because you've just casually and conveniently ignored the reduced risk _to society as a whole_. I.e., those actually vulnerable from getting sick in the first instance, but further still overwhelming the health and welfare services to the detriment of *everybody*. But also reeks of FY;GM.
- peteradio 4y ago
  Why so offended to suggest that some people could have overdone it to the overall negative? Parent isn't necessarily suggesting that the reaction was the typical one.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  This is a complex topic, mostly emotional ones (since cold hard facts can be presented on both sides but they don't sway most people at this point). I was all for various covid measures, did all the vaccines, didn't travel, practiced social distancing meticulously... to no avail, we caught it 3x by now, all the times through our small kids. At this point its milder/similar than common cold for us, unlike those being hit for the first time. Looking back, many governments around the world applied ridiculously strict restrictions, which just highlighted how badly incompetent in the best headless chicken form they are in SHTF scenarios. You couldn't travel more than 1km from your home (ie France), you couldn't be out after 6/7/8 pm even if you just want to go for a stroll or run in the forest, alone (which I do a lot). Things like these were completely needless and heavily infringed on common folks basic rights, not even going into the topic of fucking up population physical health massively down the road. Not surprisingly population's overall mental health decreased significantly too. Forcing education of kids from home is seen as failure of even greater proportions. Not only was the system utterly unprepared in first months, but this form just doesn't work as well as direct physical contact. Kids missing tons of societal development that will never work well in digital form. We should have just put extra care into protecting vulnerable and otherwise move on with our lives. If I would be an old fart and somebody would give me choice of fucking up my grandkids lives for some potential extra safety for me, I would choose my grandkids anytime, everytime. When we could have handled it ie like Sweden (from what I've heard), without any significant basic rights restrictions, and with resulting covid numbers very much the same. Next winter will show how missing 2 cold/flu seasons will bode for us, I suspect mortality stats will jump through the roof (within these diseases number ranges of course). Diabetes, cardiovascular and mental issues are already up. And one more point I haven't seen much mentioned - society as a whole completely fucked up its approach to healthcare workers. Yes there were evening claps for few months. While a nice gesture, they won't fix the burnout many had. So anywhere I look, health systems have much less medical personnel, mainly nurses simply left their jobs. The situation ie in France is so bad some big cities have to close emergencies through the weekend (!!!). Some emergency doctors left too. There is no quick fix for this. An example - I've recently spent 4 hours to get 1 blood test done (something taking 15 mins before) - and that is already optimized for timing and location since my wife is a doctor. This period won't be judged nicely by our descendants.
kadonoishi 4y ago
> There's some kind of logical fallacy in this line of argument, but I can't put my finger on a name for it. "Cowardice"? From an old version of the Wikipedia article, "Fear and excessive self-concern lead one to not do things of benefit to oneself and one's group" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowardice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowardice
bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
Seems like a close cousin of the effect described here, the "drip drip drip" effect, where problems that arise as a sequence of discrete events and that are easy to solve with a simple top down approach get solved, while problems that are more serious in total, but that are continuous is nature and require a more distributed bottom up approach to solve, don't. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/7/5/heres-why-we-respond-in-force-to-one-amtrak-crash-while-ignoring-thousands-of-daily-car-crashes https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/7/5/heres-why-we-re...
glogla 4y ago
Why did you have to derail nuclear discussion with covid denier/antivaxx nonsense? Sigh. Why replace one type of antiscience/antiintelectualism (anti nuclear people) with another (antivax)?
- anonporridge 4y ago
  How did you make the leap to covid denial/antivax from my comment? I am extremely pro vax and consider covid to be a very serious problem. People aren't black and white in their beliefs, despite what the political duopoly would like you to believe.
elurg 4y ago
> When you're terrified of Covid, so you suspend most of your activities and spend two years mostly staying home, gaining 50 pounds and decimating your fitness which drastically increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and overall significantly increasing your likelihood of dying young far in excess of the acute risk that Covid actually posed to your demographic. It's funny because I was actually able to lose 50 pounds by establishing an exercise routine at home. I understand your argument but it doesn't work for COVID: if anything lockdowns gives people more time to exercise instead of commuting via car.

woodruffw 4y ago

The key distinction here is that the (low!) long-term risk of nuclear power is well quantified, while COVID represents an unknown long-term risk.

sdsaga12 4y ago
Isn't this true of all new strains of all contagious pathogens? They are constantly undergoing change. We estimate low probability that mutated viruses or bacteria descended from strains we are familiar with will have dramatically more harmful long-term effects, but we don't actually know for certain that any given year's new strains won't have very different risk profiles until much later. We can make probabilistic models based on historical data, but they are unavoidably vulnerable to underestimating the risk of black swan events. One could argue that certain features of covid make it riskier with regard to long-term effects, but that is not a proposition that is well developed in the public conversation, especially by proponents of the zoonosis hypothesis. The lab origin hypothesis with its accompanying assumptions of serial passage and direct gene modification would in my eyes strengthen the case that covid's long-term effects were less likely to conform to historical data on other viral infections, though interestingly the intersection of those who find the lab origin more convincing with those who have serious concerns about long-term harms is a pretty small set.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  > Isn't this true of all new strains of all contagious pathogens? Yes. The distinguishing factor there is that most new strains do not kill millions of people within the first year or two of discovery. Compare, for example, the H1N1 variant that caused the 2009 flu pandemic, which killed "only" around 300,000 people (based on best excess death estimates). > One could argue that certain features of covid make it riskier with regard to long-term effects, but that is not a proposition that is well developed in the public conversation, especially by proponents of the zoonosis hypothesis. This has long been an established part of the messaging: we're more or less confident that short term effects to young, otherwise healthy individuals are minor. The guidance has still been to avoid infection, because we're not confident that mild short term guarantee or protect against serious long term effects. Chickenpox (and subsequently shingles) exemplify this. I understand the intuition that a non-zoonotic origin would lend credence to the possibility of long term risks, but I don't think the epidemiology actually supports the intuition: my understanding is that viruses that jump the species gap tend to have higher variability in terms of their harm to the new species.
- peteradio 4y ago
  I've noticed the same strange misaligned covid explanation/behavior. Lab leak would make me more fearful of the virus itself, pure zoonotic origin and I say Jesus take the wheel and by that I mean countless generations of evolution tuning my immune system against similar virus for familial survival take the wheel.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    This mis-states the relationship between your immune system and novel viruses, especially ones that cross species boundaries. Viruses adapt to avoid the adjustments the immune system makes, and zoonotic transmission means that your immune system is "seeing" all kinds of novel adaptations for the first time.

pydry 4y ago

>You're terrified of a nuclear meltdown, so instead you subject global civilization to decades of unnecessary fossil fuel burning. It's kind of fair enough to be afraid with a chances of meltdown projected at 1/3704 reactor years: https://lemielleux.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-nuclear-power-plant-meltdown/ https://lemielleux.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-nuclear-pow... Those odds are why not a single insurance company will insure a nuclear reactor for more than 0.3% the cost of a nuclear disaster. Speaking of fallacies, your argument squarely falls under the false dilemma fallacy. Nuclear is not the only form of green energy. In fact it is by far the most expensive one as well as the only one that imparts a small chance of catastrophe. It isnt needed to provide reliable power either. Wind, solar, pumped storage, batteries and demand shaping can, together, do it cheaper: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3539703-no-miracle-tech-needed-how-to-switch-to-renewables-now-and-lower-costs-doing-it/ https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3539703-no-mi... https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-worldwide https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potent...

p1mrx 4y ago
> chances of meltdown projected at 1/3704 reactor years That is for existing reactors. The point of new designs is to do better: "The likelihood of core damage due to NuScale reactor equipment failures while at full power conditions is 1 event per module every ~3 Billion Years." https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety-features/emergency-planning-zone https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety-features/emerge...
- pydry 4y ago
  And I'll believe it once the price-anderson cap is eliminated and they can still buy insurance. Otherwise it's all talk. Manufacturers will always claim on that their product is 99.9% safe. The closest realistic measure is how much financial liability their insurer is willing to shoulder and at what cost. Which is still capped at 0.03% of 1 fukushima in the US because the government thinks pushing it any higher would spook them.
  - 4y ago

serf 4y ago

to be clear : the events of 9/11 were the impetus for war; not the motivation. that trillion estimate, one of the lower ones by the way, is a cost figure without the associated profits and revenue. As horrible as it is and was, the 'military industrial complex', as a whole, profited incredibly -- this 'trickled down', a phrase I hate to use , all across the United States in the form of jobs from market players and call-for-bids across the nation to fill in niche topics (like airport security, for example) that were otherwise un-worked beforehand. Another aside : the proof that airport security has changed anything for the better is scant at best, and corrupt at worst. tl;dr : if you think any of the wars in the middle east were fought for the sake of 'American Safety', whatever that might be, then you're just not paying enough attention.

SiempreViernes 4y ago
I mean, a trillion spent is a trillion spent: it'll trickle down regardless of how you spend it, the question is if you could have spent it some other way that would have given more jobs?
- namdnay 4y ago
  It was Bush - if it hadn’t been spent on Iraq it would have gone straight to tax cuts for the upper brackets. We’re talking about the guy who managed to tank the worlds healthiest budget
  - MisterMower 4y ago
    I thought we were talking a miniature nuclear reactor…
- Jenk 4y ago
  Not if it is stashed away secretly avoiding tax and other contributions to society. https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/23/super-rich-hide-21-trillion-offshore-study-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/23/super...
- patmcc 4y ago

majormajor 4y ago

> * When we're so scared as a society of the Covid death spike that we stunt the social and educational development of children by years, which is potentially unrecoverable. This sounds a lot like "we should ignore warnings about pollution because the cost of moving away from fossil fuels would be too expensive," actually. Picking such an open-ended thing like this really undermines your point here. You want people's Covid-prompted behaviors (exaggerated into stuff like "two years mostly staying home, gaining 50 pounds") to be compared to "fear of nuclear meltdown." But you can't substantiate those long-term risks in anything like the same way we can those of burning coal at this point. Is Covid more "potentially unrecoverable" for kids and young adults than themselves or family members being drafted for a world war and dying en masse? Than school shootings that we tolerate for vague "protect our liberty" talk?

MisterMower 4y ago
Show your work, do the cost justification, and make your assumptions explicit. Until either of you do that, you’re just guessing.
- kelnos 4y ago
  I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect someone to do that work, or even have the tools or data sources to do that work. Sure, I think it's reasonable to expect people to provide sources to support ideas when possible, but it's a little unreasonable to expect people to do extensive first-party research to support their opinions. I think there's value in the discussion either way. Most of the time I don't think we're going to change people's minds with this sort of discussion, but I do enjoy seeing what people's positions are on these sorts of topics, and find that I learn things from it.
  - MisterMower 4y ago
    If they’re unwilling to do the work, then they should stop pretending to be certain that their opinion is correct.

iforgotpassword 4y ago

> It's situations where the emotional terror of acute risks forces you to default to a behavior that has less tractable, long term, systemic risks. Good thing nuclear doesn't produce hazardous waste we need to store safely for thousands of years. That would be a pretty horrible, long term risk. But OTOH who gives a fsck about generations to come, storing the waste safely while I'm still alive should be doable.

JoshTriplett 4y ago
So, instead of nuclear waste we can package up and store away where it won't hurt anyone, we have plenty of coal and gas plants, whose waste goes into the atmosphere where it hurts everyone.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  But we can't! There have been several issues with stored nuclear waste already, and we only had to do it for like what, 70 years? How can you project that to even just a couple hundred years and not expect total desaster? nuclear would be great if every single person involved were reliable, diligent engineers and scientists. But at the end of the day, the most important decisions always get made by greedy managers and CEOs, and clueless politicians.
  - e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
    I’ve never understood why just storing them in a big pool next to the power plant is a bad idea. The radiation is not a concern because the water filters it all out, it’s stable for long periods of time with very little maintenance, what’s the downside exactly? As in literally dig a hole the size of an Olympic swimming pool, store literally all the nuclear waste that has ever been produced (maybe you’ll need a few pools, I haven’t checked), and spend a few million a year maintaining it for the next century or so.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Jenk 4y ago

> When you're terrified of Covid, so you suspend most of your activities and spend two years mostly staying home, gaining 50 pounds and decimating your fitness which drastically increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and overall significantly increasing your likelihood of dying young far in excess of the acute risk that Covid actually posed to your demographic. This example (that I suspect you shoe-horned in to rant) undermines, but also fully demonstrates, your entire point because you've just casually and conveniently ignored the reduced risk _to society as a whole_. I.e., those actually vulnerable from getting sick in the first instance, but further still overwhelming the health and welfare services to the detriment of *everybody*. But also reeks of FY;GM.

peteradio 4y ago
Why so offended to suggest that some people could have overdone it to the overall negative? Parent isn't necessarily suggesting that the reaction was the typical one.
saiya-jin 4y ago
This is a complex topic, mostly emotional ones (since cold hard facts can be presented on both sides but they don't sway most people at this point). I was all for various covid measures, did all the vaccines, didn't travel, practiced social distancing meticulously... to no avail, we caught it 3x by now, all the times through our small kids. At this point its milder/similar than common cold for us, unlike those being hit for the first time. Looking back, many governments around the world applied ridiculously strict restrictions, which just highlighted how badly incompetent in the best headless chicken form they are in SHTF scenarios. You couldn't travel more than 1km from your home (ie France), you couldn't be out after 6/7/8 pm even if you just want to go for a stroll or run in the forest, alone (which I do a lot). Things like these were completely needless and heavily infringed on common folks basic rights, not even going into the topic of fucking up population physical health massively down the road. Not surprisingly population's overall mental health decreased significantly too. Forcing education of kids from home is seen as failure of even greater proportions. Not only was the system utterly unprepared in first months, but this form just doesn't work as well as direct physical contact. Kids missing tons of societal development that will never work well in digital form. We should have just put extra care into protecting vulnerable and otherwise move on with our lives. If I would be an old fart and somebody would give me choice of fucking up my grandkids lives for some potential extra safety for me, I would choose my grandkids anytime, everytime. When we could have handled it ie like Sweden (from what I've heard), without any significant basic rights restrictions, and with resulting covid numbers very much the same. Next winter will show how missing 2 cold/flu seasons will bode for us, I suspect mortality stats will jump through the roof (within these diseases number ranges of course). Diabetes, cardiovascular and mental issues are already up. And one more point I haven't seen much mentioned - society as a whole completely fucked up its approach to healthcare workers. Yes there were evening claps for few months. While a nice gesture, they won't fix the burnout many had. So anywhere I look, health systems have much less medical personnel, mainly nurses simply left their jobs. The situation ie in France is so bad some big cities have to close emergencies through the weekend (!!!). Some emergency doctors left too. There is no quick fix for this. An example - I've recently spent 4 hours to get 1 blood test done (something taking 15 mins before) - and that is already optimized for timing and location since my wife is a doctor. This period won't be judged nicely by our descendants.

kadonoishi 4y ago

> There's some kind of logical fallacy in this line of argument, but I can't put my finger on a name for it. "Cowardice"? From an old version of the Wikipedia article, "Fear and excessive self-concern lead one to not do things of benefit to oneself and one's group" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowardice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowardice

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago

Seems like a close cousin of the effect described here, the "drip drip drip" effect, where problems that arise as a sequence of discrete events and that are easy to solve with a simple top down approach get solved, while problems that are more serious in total, but that are continuous is nature and require a more distributed bottom up approach to solve, don't. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/7/5/heres-why-we-respond-in-force-to-one-amtrak-crash-while-ignoring-thousands-of-daily-car-crashes https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/7/5/heres-why-we-re...

glogla 4y ago

Why did you have to derail nuclear discussion with covid denier/antivaxx nonsense? Sigh. Why replace one type of antiscience/antiintelectualism (anti nuclear people) with another (antivax)?

anonporridge 4y ago
How did you make the leap to covid denial/antivax from my comment? I am extremely pro vax and consider covid to be a very serious problem. People aren't black and white in their beliefs, despite what the political duopoly would like you to believe.

elurg 4y ago

> When you're terrified of Covid, so you suspend most of your activities and spend two years mostly staying home, gaining 50 pounds and decimating your fitness which drastically increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and overall significantly increasing your likelihood of dying young far in excess of the acute risk that Covid actually posed to your demographic. It's funny because I was actually able to lose 50 pounds by establishing an exercise routine at home. I understand your argument but it doesn't work for COVID: if anything lockdowns gives people more time to exercise instead of commuting via car.