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Comment by ojnabieoot | Hacker News Reader

In context - this is less for you than for the "COVID is no big deal" folks - that's 5x the annual likelihood of a 40-year-old dying in a car crash in the United States, and about 60x the likelihood of a 40-year-old dying of the swine flu during the 2009 epidemic.

So COVID is in fact very dangerous for 40-year-olds. Pose a thought experiment: if someone said "would you go out drinking with your friends tonight if there was a 10% chance that, for the next 12 months, you'll be 5x as likely to die in a car crash than baseline?" I would say "absolutely not, why would you even ask me this?" and I certainly wouldn't take that risk over-and-over again for such a petty reason.

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I confront people who think they'll be ok because "the fatality rate for my age is only, like, 0.1%" with this question:

You would play the lottery with those odds, wouldn't you? But you don't want to play that lottery.

People don't realize how high odds of 1 in a 1000 are until you flip it around like that.

I take that bet. Easily. 1/ 1000? Ha! Anytime. If it means my kids can go to school, economy doesn't have to crash hard and I don't have to waste a year or more of my life, it's an obvious choice.

1 year is ~1.25% of my life that I will not get back no matter what.

Now, anyone is free to stay in their pod and eat bugs, if they're scared.

Make a list of 20 ~40 year olds you know. Are you ok with there being a 2% chance that at least one of them dies of COVID?

When exactly did our societies became so cuddly, childish, weak and pathetic to even ask these questions?

How would this society fight any large scale war? Or make any large scale sacrifice like people fixing up consequences of Chernobyl disaster did?

People used to rather die for honor, than live in shame. Had duels, took risky lifestyles, discovering new things and so on. Fought and died for their ideas.

And now what? Wrap yourself in a blanket and lie scared on the bed?

What's the point of living, if we're too afraid to die to actually live?

I am pessimistic on changes of survival of western civilization.

I dunno, my take on it is how can we fight a large scale war if we can't even stay in our homes for a couple months instead of going out to bars / concerts / sports events. On the scale of sacrifices that is pretty small compared to going to war or fixing a nuclear meltdown, and we can't even manage that.

> Or make any large scale sacrifice

Sacrifice is exactly what people aren't doing and why we're living through this disaster.

The sacrifice we should be looking at is not the risk of catching COVID-19. It's that of following a set of rules that drastically minimize the spread of the disease. Simple rules, by the way.

If everyone had the kind of thinking some (most?) Asian societies have (collective first, individual second), we'd be looking at a much different world right now. I'm thinking mainly of Taiwan.

But no, we have to deal with people throwing tantrums because they can't wear a piece of cloth over their faces.

Yeah, I'm sure you are making such a sacrifice, working from home, having to eat doordash delivered food instead of a proper restuarant one. So virtuous. Here, have this medal.

You presume to know me.

I actually pick up food from local restaurants around me.

I (and many other people) continued to pay my gym membership when they had to close due to the lockdown, to support them during that time.

And so on.

I don't even have the option not to wfh (and even if I had, why would I go to the office and risk unnecessary exposure to the virus?), since my office closed for our safety even before government lockdowns became a thing.

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