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Comment by advisedwang | Hacker News Reader

Many of the young people I interact with are not really afraid for themselves, but that they will end up killing their grandparents or even just strangers.

Gen Z is very socially minded and concerned with doing the right thing for society at large, and that's motivating their isolation more than fear for their personal safety, I believe.

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Various polls throughout the pandemic have shown that both zoomers and millenials have been terrible on average estimating their personal risk as well as the risk of the other age groups. Believing they have at least a 2% fatality risk, and a 7.5% chance of hospitalization. Which is wrong by several orders of magnitude. Source: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/21/young-pe...

Social media has magnified the natural fear and anxiety that many of us naturally feel surrounding disease. The generations most exposed to it are the least able to accurately estimate risk associated with Covid as a result.

I personally believe that historians will look back on this period as one driven by panic and extreme emotion. Social media is to blame for this, and will continue to magnify these kinds of events.

I looked up the stats and for someone under 35, they are more likely to die of murder than of Covid-19, in the United States and much more likely to die of suicide or car accident.

I take steps to avoid dying from a car accident (wearing a seatbelt and not drunk driving) and, hopefully, am not suicidal. I also try to eat healthy and exercise to avoid the many ways your diet and lack of exercise can kill you.

So why is it weird to take steps to avoid dying of a preventable deadly pandemic?

For the same reason that it's weird to wear a bulletproof vest everywhere you go: it makes life less lively and enjoyable and it makes human contact less fulfilling. Your focus becomes staying alive rather than being alive. You lose out on social serendipity. You rob yourself of fulfilling experiences like dancing with someone you just met, singing karaoke with strangers, smiling at a boy or girl you're into getting smiled back at, smelling the roses, and taking in the here and the now.

You can look behind every bush for a killer, maybe it will save your life, but it's no way to live life.

Yeah it's sort of silly because the reason the risk of car accidents is low is because you take steps to avoid them.

Of course. The kind I was describing is definitely a minority. I'm an older millennial, myself. I've been socially distancing since last February. But my fear and worries have been largely for my friends with chronic conditions, my older relatives, my community, and humanity in general. I haven't had much fear for my own personal health, and I do think that's a reasonable feeling given the odds for me. But it is jarring when contrasted with people in the same situation who are terribly worried.

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