The risks of not freaking out and it decimating the populace should easily outweigh the risks of freaking out and it not having an impact. It's very difficult to even rationalize the latter because a freakout might mean the impact is negligible.
At this point more than enough data exists to show the population will suffer ~1% losses. We shouldn't need 10% to freak out. Not to mention long-tail fatalities that might arise if it becomes an annual virus like the flu. When all that had to happen was people treat it seriously to begin with rather than saying "But the flu is way worse".
Maybe, or maybe not. Let’s say it’s 0.5% fatal and largely only to folks who are older and have comorbid conditions. Instead we panic 100% of people, leading to mass hysteria, loss of livelihood, global recession, military zombie apocalypse lockdowns and so on. What if our response causes more harm? It might well.
Proportionality of response matters and so do second and third order effects. What if all the above causes more than 5000 suicides? Did we win?
The difference between 0.5% and 3% case fatality rate is in large part determined by whether hospitals become overwhelmed, and that in turn will be determined by whether we take immediate and widespread preemptive action to reduce the exponent of the infection curve.
Generate a random int from [0,199]. If you generated a 0, you die.
Rationally, you pretty confident that you won't die? Sure. But what behavior changes are you willing to tolerate not to have to take the chance? I sure wouldn't take the bet on a lark, even though the expectation is that I live.
Now think about extending that same game to your family and friends, to the school down the street, to the shopping mall, and to the elder's home in town. Some people are going to roll 0, and there's a real risk that some of those people are people you know and care about. And even if they're not, your community will still be dramatically affected. It could be your car mechanic, your office's custodial staff, or the greybeard in your office who knows how to decipher the old FORTRAN code.
I'm not willing to be flippant about that. Even 1 in 200 people can be devastating emotional, logistical, and financial toll on a community. I'm not saying panic, but I don't think it's smart or responsible to downplay the risks of infection in a disease that is currently spreading exponentially (or, at least, maintains a positive growth ratio.) Canceling gatherings, temporarily closing schools, working from home, etc.--these are all inconvenient, they make our lives and business harder, they're having a negative financial impact. But they're also totally the reasonable course of action in the face of a pretty serious threat.
There's a 1% lifetime chance you die in a car accident and 2% you die of an opioid overdose. Roll a die between [0,199] and get a 0,1 you die in a car wreck. Roll a 2,3,4 or a 5, and you die of an opioid overdose. I'd be willing to bet somewhere around the 6-10 range represents your risk of dying of a climate related change.
Rationally, you pretty confident that you won't die? Sure. But what behavior changes are you willing to tolerate not to have to take the chance?
Evidently none, because here we are diving cars, taking painkillers and rolling coal. This is a solid read: [1]. If you're immunocompromised or old, by all means, stay inside and don't associate with groups of people. If you're young and healthy, you're totally unequivocally fine.
This quote is particularly apropos: "...We're bad at accurately assessing risk; we tend to exaggerate spectacular, strange, and rare events, and downplay ordinary, familiar, and common ones."
You're comparing lifetime risks with an annual risk. And your third paragraph is so full of misinformation, I almost believe you're intentionally trolling.
And Bruce isn't discussing a failure to assess the risk of COVID-19 (the article is from 2013). He's criticizing the fetish of expect technology to solve social problems. I've interviewed Bruce and I think he'd be appalled to think his essay was being misconstrued in this manner.
> You're comparing lifetime risks with an annual risk.
And? People tend to develop immunity to diseases the've had in the past (although this is TBD in this specific case) so lifetime risk could easily be a reasonable comparison metric. My point is we do very dangerous things regularly, but because we're used to them, we largely ignore them.
Cigarettes kill 480,000 people in the US alone each year [0]. The flu kills 61,000 people in the US alone each year. Alcohol kills 88,000 people in the US alone each year. Opioids kill 77,000 people in the US alone each year.
There are 6 million car accidents in the US each year of which 2 million people receive permanent injuries and 36,000 die.
nCoV-19 is on track to kill 100 in the US.
> And your third paragraph is so full of misinformation, I almost believe you're intentionally trolling.
How so? The mortality rates are clear: under 10, 0% chance of death. 11-39, 0.2% chance of death. 40-49, 0.4% chance of death. [1] Older folks, higher rates, but of course, H1N1 kills 10% of elderly folks that get it too. And these are CFRs -- numbers which go down, sometimes dramatically, over time as we gain a fuller perspective on the situation.
If you're young you are fine. Children are basically unaffected, that is, they catch it, and it goes away. Often they don't even notice they had it.
> And Bruce isn't discussing a failure to assess the risk of COVID-19 (the article is from 2013).
I never said he was. The quote was pretty clear and free-standing: people are bad at assessing risk of unlikely or one-off events. It terrifies them.
In my opinion the essay evaluates one set of strategies people use to avoid risk at all costs: technological, but it's the realization of the underlying that is relevant here.
Or in the realm of 3% when hospitals are saturated, because everyone gets sick at once. Which they will with exponential spread and a doubling rate of 4 days.
I don't consider it acceptable to sacrifice 3% of the population in one fell swoop, to avoid short-term economic damage. Or even a fraction of that. It's abhorrent. Please walk me through the moral reasoning if this is your stance.
By the way, someone getting very, very sad because their quite healthy loved parent died a decade too early, is also economic damage.