Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

"That benchmark “seems to be a huge exaggeration,” as Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews, said. In truth, the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below 1 percent and may be below 0.1 percent, multiple epidemiologists told me. The rare outdoor transmission that has happened almost all seems to have involved crowded places or close conversation."

I'm extremely grateful that the NYT is calling this out. However, they are far too late, and frankly, played a role in misinforming the public on the pandemic.

The audience on HN is pretty strongly aware of the extreme misinformation on COVID pushed out by right-wing news organizations, but doesn't SEEM to be aware of the extreme misinformation that was pushed out by the left-wing news outlets, which successfully skewed the US public's perception of COVID risk.

The partisan divide on THIS specific topic shows that American's on both sides of the political divide grossly overestimate the likelihood of hospitalization from COVID, but that those who consume left-wing media are an order of magnitude more incorrect.

Here's a good breakdown, containing links to the source polling data on the topic.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-misinformation-is-dis...

I wasn't quite aware of how misinformed highly educated colleagues were until I contracted COVID in mid-February. My wife and I couldn't understand why people were acting like I was in so much danger, until we realized that people were grossly overestimating, by massive factors, the danger I was in. I'm a physically fit, active male in my late 30's. But people on my team acted very surprised that I didn't miss any work, and only had a loss of sense of smell as a symptom. They were acting as if I was somewhat of an outlier, instead of being the absolute norm for my age group/health status.

The implications of this fear-mongering results in me being treated like a leper for not wearing a mask on hiking trails in wide open, wind-blown, and sunny open spaces.

It's been a big reminder to me, that no, people on the left aren't actually less prone to misinformation, despite my preconceived notions and biases. Quantitative illiteracy in the majority of the American public has had horrific effects in this pandemic.

I think more than a left-right thing, this is a different axis. Some people are just more fearful in general. I've been surprised by friends of my same political persuasion that have acted in ways I would honestly need to call, not-quite-sane. Such as deciding now to keep their child out of school for the entire 21-22 school year, or leaving deliveries on their porch for 3 days before bringing it inside. These are smart people in many ways, but somehow their brains were hijacked.

Talking to them about the actual risks triggers an emotional response. Even relating the risk level to something they do every day like driving seems to have no effect.

These are people who are educated and consume news from respectable sources.

This is an intersection of so many things: politics (outsourcing your judgment to your enemy and effectively just doing the opposite of them), brain-structure propensity for fear, esteem for authorities and experts (fundamentally the tendency towards authoritarianism, whether it's based in expertise or other things), class tendencies that value visible signals of virtue, intelligence and taste, etc.

Extremely well stated and reasoned.

My brother's wife is one of these folks you talk about, with the "keeping kids out of school" and "leaving deliveries on porch for 3 days".

Very well said!

What I'm very curious about is what makes me perceive risk so much differently than these others. I'm wondering if it's conditioning (I spent a big chunk of my life building houses, and therefore climbing on extension ladders and walking on roof trusses was a daily ritual), childhood (I was in unstable environments a lot), or just brain wiring from birth.

A respondent on your comment mentioned a willingness to "outsource judgement to news sources" and even better "outsourcing judgement to political rivals and adopting the opposite viewpoint by default". This is a phenomenon that I anecdotally notice is intensified with educated elites. My brother's wife went to Cornell, never struck me as particularly creative or novel, but just has a great work ethic and follows what books tell her to do. She's a born rule follower, and follows conventional wisdom to the point where it borders on comical and often, defying common sense.

> What I'm very curious about is what makes me perceive risk so much differently than these others. I'm wondering if it's conditioning (I spent a big chunk of my life building houses, and therefore climbing on extension ladders and walking on roof trusses was a daily ritual), childhood (I was in unstable environments a lot), or just brain wiring from birth.

I'm guessing conditioning is a big part of it.

I'd wager the majority or people with more hysterical reactions have lived fairly comfortable lives, without having to face much in the way of dangerous risks. And without that, they also fail to also learn that risks and dangers can be controlled and mitigated. Or that even mild preparedness can mean the difference between recoverable injury and death. So absent this personal experience of a counterpoint to the hysteria on the news, they're more likely to accept prognostications of certain horrible doom uncritically.

Yea I think back to generations past, where you'd find yourself being sent to Normandy or something or stationed on a ship that just got hit by a torpedo. Chance of death - >>1%.

Now healthy people with a fraction of a percent risk of hospitalization, much less death, act like agoraphobes - apparently willing to do so indefinitely.

Far removed from the experience of the world as it is, dependent on the comfort of advanced human technology, people have become debilitated by the mere idea of the challenges that their ancestors overcame and readily coped with.

Courage is gone, and it's perhaps the most important virtue that allows one to get through life and face the insurmountable challenges that all of us will encounter.

What's really interesting is how many of my comments on this topic have been downvoted to oblivion with absolutely no responses from the people doing the downvoting.

I think a willingness to face temporary discomfort is something that seems to be in decline with specific members of the younger cohort of the millennial generation. This translates to journalism where you have a new generation of journalist who produces clickbait all day but never goes and interviews people in person and certainly doesn't do so over the phone. Think about how many people you know are unwilling to make phone calls and prefer text messages almost exclusively. That's not a huge deal but many of these same people are extremely uncomfortable interacting over a telephone with strangers. It's a really bad recipe for quality journalism.

Any attempt to have nuanced discussions on these topics immediately makes the sectarian politicos come out in droves and assume that you are a supporter of the previous president even if you aren't.

Trying to discuss the extremely plausible scenario of an accidental lab leak makes people assume you're a Trump supporter, for example. My opinion is that if he wasn't so ridiculously ignorant and unwilling to show vulnerability by engaging in topics he knows nothing about and attempting to learn, we would be in a much better place with this pandemic. Instead he didn't want to do that and simply offloaded all thinking to Fauci, but then simultaneously would attack him whenever he was speaking to certain groups.

Yea I largely agree with all the stuff you're saying. Regarding Trump though, I think he did do himself a massive disservice giving space to people like Fauci and Bolton. Although, with a generous interpretation, he certainly seems to be able to listen and platform people he diametrically opposes, which is something I don't know can be said about his opposition.

This has been bothering me for years, long before covid-19. Avoiding risk has become such a huge part of our culture that most of our standard salutations revolve around this: "stay safe", "have a safe trip", "drive safely", and so forth.

I'd much rather that people would wish me a fulfilling life in which I available myself of many rich experiences.

That brings to mind "safetyism" coined in the The Coddling of the American Mind.

Unsurprisingly safety is invoked in a variety of ways when certain people encounter ideas they don't like.

Doing so allows a person to completely sidestep the responsibility of mounting an argument.

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

> Now healthy people with a fraction of a percent risk of hospitalization, much less death, act like agoraphobes - apparently willing to do so indefinitely.

If someone wants to be an agoraphobe, they can do so. But what bugs me is that these newly-minted agoraphobes seem to treat their agoraphobia with the same fervor and source of moral purity as a religion. To speak the heresy that one might have some control over what existential dangers await beyond one's front door is met with the same screeching panic that would follow suggesting all pre-pubescent children should be required to participate in satanic sex orgies. By refusing to be (as much as) a victim, you are an active threat to all that is good and true in the world.

I like to joke that I don't go outside because the day star is trying to kill me with radiation burns. And then I laugh at my silliness, put on sunscreen, and go outside anyway. But imagine being scolded by someone that, your not-easily-burning darker skin be damned, because you don't think you need sunscreen, you are the reason their dearest grandmother died of skin cancer. All the while recording you with their phone so the whole Internet will know that you, a science-denying anti-sunscreener, are also a killer-of-grandmas.

It's kinda like that.

> seem to treat their agoraphobia with the same fervor and source of moral purity as a religion

Oh yea, I'm gay and it clicked to me recently that the gay clubs I go to are basically just monasteries now. It used to be that gay people were known for unabashedly saying what couldn't be said (the profane) - it's now the complete opposite, gay people largely are enumerating an endless list of what's considered profane. Constant pearl-clutching, tip-toeing, hushed gossip, forced repentance and excommunication.

It's hard not to see the illiberal attitudes on the left (which at least in recent history were concentrated on the right, a consequence of their rigid sense of morality and tradition) as nothing more than rule-book fanatics evangelizing and prescribing a sacred morality.

John McWhorter calls these people The Elect, and I think correctly identified that this is fundamentally a religion. It spans all sorts of topics, but maintains the same character, for instance, in something like anti-racism:

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-po...

Construction is one of the most dangerous professions, but I’m not sure which direction the risk level is flowing in. Maybe working changed your risk assessment or maybe you wound up in that line of work because you already were more of a risk taker.

I was helping my 60 year old dad fasten some trusses a few months ago for the first time since I was a teen and damn, I was nervous as he walked along the fastened ones to do some fiddling needed in the middle beam. I know I wasn’t nearly as quick to follow instructions when I was 15 and was doing this all the time and it felt normal.

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