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>It's like there is this thirst for disaster or some global drama everywhere, and this is not something that I would expect from Hackernews. Being somewhat of a cynic, it doesn't surprise me to see it here. HackerNews posters apparently love thinking about global catastophes and societal discontinuities. Read the breathless posts warning of dire consequences arising from the tariffs on in China 24 months or so ago. The flurry of horrific predictions arising as a result of Brexit. The neverending hysteria about CO2, ocean warming, ocean acidification, the mass-extinction insects, etc.... Most posts to hackernews come from workers who are bored... they turn to HackerNews to read interesting articles. And, there is nothing more interesting than fantasizing about some event that would give them a reason not to go work the next day. It's a normal thing to do... back in my day, it was nuclear strikes and Soviet invasions ( "wolverines!!"). Nowadays it's viruses and CO2... (a poor substitute, in my opinion, for the much cooler angst about nuclear winter and the like... but, to each their own.) And, whatever the cause celebre may be at the time, you can always count on posters getting really ticked off at skeptics and responding along the lines of, "You just don't get it! The science is clear! This time it's different!" |
The threat of nuclear war was (and is) real.
The mass reduction of insects is well-documented.
The threat of rising CO2 levels is one of the most-studied phenomena in science.
> "You just don't get it! The science is clear! This time it's different!"
Actually, it's not necessarily different. There are historical precedents for viral pandemics. The flu pandemic of 1918 killed 50–100 million people.
That doesn't mean this outbreak will be on the same scale, but it's not unreasonable to be concerned.