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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

I’m still dumbfounded at how a virus with 0.0x pct mortality rate could transform most western countries and have them relinquish their most core values. This probably means that anything above 1% can turn any of them into a total tyranny.

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Think like an engineer. First job of a policy designer in a democracy is perception shaping. For example, in a poll from Dec 2020, perception of covid hospitalization rates in <24 age group was about 8%, vs. reality 0.1%. For general population, hospitalization rates were estimated over 50% by a third of the population, with another quarter estimating 20-49%. Reality: 1-5%.

As of and example of practical techniques, I saved once an APNews article:

> Virus surge breaks hospital records amid rising toll on kids

The implication that our brain makes is that kids are getting into hospital in record numbers because of covid. The actual story has loosely related 3 parts:

1. That adult hospitals are getting filled, in a couple of states.

2. That the share of covid cases in kids out of covid cases in all age groups is growing in a couple different states.

3. An anecdote that somebody had some covid patients as young as 16 in some hospital (selection bias alert).

If you are a parent and only skimmed the article, you saw 'hospitals ... 17% ... children and teens ... DELTA'. Your heart is racing. You are thinking that a double digit percent of kids end up in the hospital with a covid case. You end up overestimating the impact of covid in kids by a factor of 100. Masks? YES Vaccines? YES Lockdowns? YES Vaccine passports? YES YES YES PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.

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

https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-17667...

Things have a way of becoming what the ruling class wants them to become. Eventually, every crisis, however minor, becomes another excuse for them to grab more money and power from the rest of us.

Well, it is 1% if you account in all ages. It is clearly larger in certain age groups.

Since the beginning, the problem was knowing the difference between dying "with" covid and dying "because" of covid. IMHO, the best way of looking at the impact of the pandemic is by looking at the excess mortality year by year. Old people does show a pike,proving that there definitely was an impact, but for the general population it is barely noticeable.

overall the impact of the pandemic on demographic evolution will be 0. OTOH, the impact on society and its standard regarding personnal freedom , and what it is ready to accept will be huge. It is definitely a turning point in that regard.

Core values of? People who sit in front of Netflix and YouTube and read Facebook and browse Instagram and TikTok and Reddit and HN?

Bread and circuses.

I was really depressed to see the absence of reaction yes.

I happen to be working on an e2e messaging app at the moment, and i really started to wonder if people really cared at all about privacy, as well as all what we consider our fundamental rights.

I came to the conclusion that most are ready to trade everything for a bit of a sense of security. Scare them enough and you can get anything you want from them.

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