5 ms·

A 1% chance of death that’s evenly distributed across 80 years is dramatically less impactful to one’s expected quantity of life than a 1% chance of death that

A 1% chance of death that’s evenly distributed across 80 years is dramatically less impactful to one’s expected quantity of life than a 1% chance of death that happens immediately. Additionally, I’d note that nearly all higher income individuals take steps to reduce their auto death risks including buying safer vehicles, living closer to work, and using professional drivers when drunk or otherwise impaired. As for your final paragraph, it is wholly unreasonable to imply that covid (which is killing thousands of Americans per day despite a massive distancing effort) is less serious than the flu (which has persisted over a much longer period of time and which was not subject to special responses).

arcticbull 6y ago
> As for your final paragraph, it is wholly unreasonable to imply that covid (which is killing thousands of Americans per day despite a massive distancing effort) is less serious than the flu (which has persisted over a much longer period of time and which was not subject to special responses). I didn't say or imply that. It's worse than the flu, probably 5-10X worse. Not bad, not great. I'm suggesting that people are freaking out because there's "bodies on the street" and we're all in serious danger (we're overwhelmingly just not) when the death toll to date is about half of what we paid zero attention to whatsoever over the same time period. My argument is that we shouldn't be nearly as freaked out about COVID as we are, and we should be more freaked out about the flu. There's reason to take precautions, especially if you're in a risk category, but not at all to the extent of the panic we've seen to date. In fact Sweden's plan of literally just that is going great, they've not shut anything down, and told people to stay home if they're sick (shocking, I know) and the serious-case infection growth rate has flattened out by itself. [1, 2] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-19/sweden-says-controversial-covid-19-strategy-is-proving-effective https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-19/sweden-sa... [2] https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sweden&location=US https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sw...

arcticbull 6y ago

> As for your final paragraph, it is wholly unreasonable to imply that covid (which is killing thousands of Americans per day despite a massive distancing effort) is less serious than the flu (which has persisted over a much longer period of time and which was not subject to special responses). I didn't say or imply that. It's worse than the flu, probably 5-10X worse. Not bad, not great. I'm suggesting that people are freaking out because there's "bodies on the street" and we're all in serious danger (we're overwhelmingly just not) when the death toll to date is about half of what we paid zero attention to whatsoever over the same time period. My argument is that we shouldn't be nearly as freaked out about COVID as we are, and we should be more freaked out about the flu. There's reason to take precautions, especially if you're in a risk category, but not at all to the extent of the panic we've seen to date. In fact Sweden's plan of literally just that is going great, they've not shut anything down, and told people to stay home if they're sick (shocking, I know) and the serious-case infection growth rate has flattened out by itself. [1, 2] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-19/sweden-says-controversial-covid-19-strategy-is-proving-effective https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-19/sweden-sa... [2] https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sweden&location=US https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sw...