[test_epsilon]

I'm not being glib here, how do you link 9/11 and Covid regulations and Berlin wall to really needing to pay attention to the news?

Check your government website if you want to know what the regulations are today, or check your airport and airline sites before you leave for the airport if you're worried about delays. You don't need "news" for this.

I don't think you need to over complicate it. There's nothing wrong with checking the news daily if that's what you like, or following some particular stories or events important to you even more regularly. A compulsion to keep checking, spending hours a day on it, or some fear that you need to check or you'll miss out is where it could negatively affect your life.

[tomjen3]

I don't need to read the news to discover covid, it was on hacker news long before it hit the media and I don't need them or the government to read/understand an exponential graph.

I needed them to keep taps on the government and explain the ever changing rules in a better, more clear way. It is not important for the government to make the rules simple, understandable or appreciable so they didn't.

That is not overclomplicating it, btw. That is responding to reality.

[test_epsilon]

If you were that concerned exactly following the rules that change on a daily basis and are so difficult to decipher, why would you trust a journalist to get it right for you? What country, by the way, I'd like to see these crazy rules for myself.

And by over complicating it, I'm talking about this exponential backoff algorithm. You can read the news if you want, don't feel bad about it. Nothing bad is going to happen and you won't miss out on much if you don't though. And I promise you you would spend more time scouring the news for 9/11 type events than you would spend stuck in airports due to said events because you didn't read the news.