Americans think they are better at social distancing than their neighbors | Hacker News Reader

Americans think they are better at social distancing than their neighbors

qz.com

12 pointslaurex28 comments

If perfect compliance was required we'd be suffering the consequence right now. Turns out, the American way of half-assing it has been sufficient to slow the spread of the virus more than enough to avert catastrophe. Even the predictable, politically-motivated free-riders haven't been enough to render our efforts ineffective (so far).

In the coming months, this is going to be more about endurance than strict compliance. Better to praise people for the efforts they do make than to berate them for failing to meet whatever strict criteria you've developed after reading too many fear-mongering articles. That runner without a mask almost certainly won't spread the virus, but a group of people having a protest or an underground party or church service will! If we drive people to abandon the cause because of purity tests, we will all suffer.

The rural half (population-wise) of the country is quite sparse, so limiting your "bubble" is a little easier. The urban half of the country are in cities where most have instituted enforceable shelter-in-place rules, and are generally more liberal so may pay less heed to the rhetoric coming from some members of the federal government.

1) shelter-in-place has been instituted locally because the federal government has been an abysmal failure.

2) Compliance with SIP breaks down along party lines, correct - but it's conservatives who insist that breaking distancing rules is absolutely mandatory to their freedoms. Liberals as a whole are more willing to follow those SIP orders.

3) The rural population has mostly done well because they're fairly insulated from global or even state-wide travel. Unfortunately, the right has taken advantage of the political divide over SIP to organize massive rallies - and pulled in a lot of people from rural areas. Some of them in turn have become infected and now spread things locally. Expect a noticeable uptick in rural places within a few weeks.

(I realize #1 & #2 may be replying to something you didn't say - it's not clear what your "paying attention to federal rhetoric" comment refers to, but it looks like it's about SIP?)

> shelter-in-place has been instituted locally because the federal government has been an abysmal failure.

shelter-in-place was always going to be a local policy. The US government is simply not set up for the federal government to enact such a policy. What was expected, however, is for the federal government to take a strong advisory position and state and local governments to more or less follow the federal guidelines. It would also not be out of character to see some strong-arming from the federal government to "encourage" compliance from the states

> Turns out, the American way of half-assing it has been sufficient to slow the spread of the virus more than enough to avert catastrophe

91,000 Americans have died from this[1], and you don't think it's a catastrophe?

Remember, only 2,977 died on 9/11 [2]

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11...

America is suffering greatly from this pandemic, but we have avoided far worse scenarios seen in parts of China and Italy thanks to lockdown efforts. That is what I mean by "avert catastrophe". Healthcare systems were never overloaded and curves have largely been bent.

>If perfect compliance was required we'd be suffering the consequence right now. Turns out, the American way of half-assing it has been sufficient to slow the spread of the virus more than enough to avert catastrophe. Even the predictable, politically-motivated free-riders haven't been enough to render our efforts ineffective (so far).

I suspect that American's are the only ones in the world that share this view. To the rest of us your response has been among the worst on the planet. We watch in horror as you intentionally throw lives away.

Per capita deaths in the US are far below the levels in Sweden, the Netherlands, France, the UK, Italy and Spain. So it must be the other parts of the world watching in horror, because many other Western nations are dealing with their own horror at the moment.

It's been truly amazing to me how few people understand per capita statistics.

Virtually everybody seems to think that the US is doing much worse than Europe, when the exact opposite is the truth.

The US is doing better than Andorra, San Marino, Belgium, Spain, the UK, Italy, Ireland, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands on per capita deaths. The rest of Europe is doing better [1].

If we expand beyond Europe, the list of countries that the US is doing better than remains the same. The list of countries doing better than the US massively expands, to around 180 or more.

[1] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

The US isn't testing enough for that conclusion to be drawn from cases per day. Looking at deaths per day, or per week, the US is number one. Perceptions are correct.

Do you really think the world's poorest countries are doing better?

Or is it more likely that they just can't afford to do rt-PCR?

I'm pretty sure their numbers are just massively under reported.

You're just wrong man.

https://i.imgur.com/DqhlWRq.png

Reported Deaths per Capita:

  1. San Marino
  2. Belgium
  3. Andorra
  4. Spain  
  5. Italy  
  6. United Kingdom  
  7. France  
  8. Sweden  
  9. Netherlands  
  10. Ireland

Not even in the top 10.

  11. US

Unreported Deaths in the developing world are without a doubt much worse.

State your case that the opposite is true. How is the United States doing "much worse" than the UK, for exmaple?

I said the US is doing better per capita than most of Europe.

I think many of the statistics need more context, for example looking at death rate vs population density is interesting.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-death-rate-vs-po...

Obviously Monaco and San Marino are outliers. It looks like Sweden and Spain did a worse job; UK, France and Italy are comparable to the US; and the Netherlands seems to be doing a better job at it.

I chose population density, because it seems like a metric that would greatly change the step required to combat a Pandemic. But I think it would be a better comparison to show US states instead of the US as a whole.

It isn't over, those countries have cases on the decline now, the US is still rising. It's fully reasonable to expect that the rise will go even faster now with everything opening up.

Also, the US isn't testing as much and is now also trying to avoid reporting cases in various states that are opening, so it's hard to trust the US numbers.

Do I think I’m better at social distancing than my neighbors? Yes. But when I’m asked to rate my neighbors, I immediately think of the one neighbor I always see out socializing on the street. I don’t think of all the neighbors I never see, presumably because they’re hiding out at home. A form of availability bias is coloring my perceptions here.

In other news, people also think they’re better drivers than their neighbors, have smarter children then their neighbors, and are better looking than their neighbors.

It’s a well-known bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_...

Passed someone yesterday not wearing a mask pointing out how other people were not wearing masks :)

(In San Francisco)

Ha. SF described in a single line. :-)

Maybe they are! The friendship paradox says the average person's friends have more social connections on average than the original person.

Isn't this a natural result of how empathy works?

You can both feel the urge from your own brain, and far more comprehensively understand the consequences, of not doing a thing (employment, meeting a long term partner, friend, ...).

By contrast when you see a person on the street it's easy to think "rules say no hence bad".

As others state, you're also wired to think of the novel/interesting case and ignore the people holed up at home because they're invisible.

Or the fundamental attribution error. If someone else does something wrong, it's because of who they are as a person; if I do something wrong, it's because of my special circumstances.

You've taught me the name for what I was attempting to explain in my first post :)

fundamental attribution error: we judge ourselves by intention, and others by action.

Isn't most of the data coming out of the states majorly skewed by the amount of testing being done? Surely there are many more cases than are reported due to this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

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