[time_to_smile]

> What looks like fearmongering now

We had over 1 million deaths in the US.

You travel back to 2016 and tell people we'll have a pandemic in the US, 1 million people will die, and then large groups of people will attempt to shrug that off as "nothing to get concerned about", people would find that incomprehensible.

If I were to post a comment on HN in 2016 suggesting that people would shrug off 1 million deaths due to a pandemic because it doesn't align with their worldview I would have been downvoted into oblivious for holding such a laughably ridiculous and cynical opinion.

Same could be said of the countless other climate related impacts that people in the very near distant past would consider horrific and impossible.

The power of the "this is fine" culture to not see reality is terrifying.

[bushbaba]

300k Americans die each year from obesity. Yet nobody seems to view this as an urgent issue needing addressing.

[RugnirViking]

quite a lot of people do and have seen obesity as an urgent issue needing addressing. People at many levels of government, in both political parties, and for many years....