[mvkel]

> conventionally

That's everything. Nuclear deaths were socially significant because they were novel. "Hey everyone, here is a new way to die." And everyone paid attention.

Another example: Covid. It's a coronavirus. Know what else is a coronavirus? The common cold. But because Covid was novel, "hey everyone, here is a new way to die." And everyone paid attention.

[JohnBooty]

    But because Covid was novel

Do you think the fact that it was orders of magnitude more fatal and transmissible had anything to do with it, or do you truly think it was just the "novelty" factor?

[mvkel]

I didn't say novelty. I said novel, which has a specific definition

[mcpackieh]

> orders of magnitude more fatal

Really? From what I understand the IFR for covid without vaccination was somewhere in the range of 0.5% to maybe 1%, versus the flu at 0.1%. 10x worse; that would be one order of magnitude. That's for the normal flu, the Spanish Flu was much worse than either, about 10% e.g. two orders of magnitude. At three orders of magnitude you're already talking about near certain death.

[JohnBooty]

Apologies, but I'm certain you've misread the parent post to which I was responding. They wrote:

    Another example: Covid. It's a coronavirus. Know what 
    else is a coronavirus? The common cold. But because Covid 
    was novel [...]

They explicitly (and rather unbelievably) compared COVID-19 to the common cold, not the flu.

[anononaut]

Wrong thread.

[JohnBooty]

There are a lot of controversial aspects to COVID-19 that are perhaps best avoided on HN, but the assertion that it's far more dangerous than the common cold is hardly a controversial statement.