Oh right, I’m supposed to write something; there’s no Wise Madness Generator App. Somebody at Google or Apple should get on that. I went out on an expedition today; all the way to the local grocery store to get potatoes and milk. Last time I shopped there were no potatoes and my milk inexplicably turned early. I tried a new COVID-19 precaution. I put antiseptic wipes in a baggie and took them with me. I wiped down my basket, the milk, and every surface I touched till I was home. Then I washed my hands. If I lived alone I would skip the wipes and just refrain from touching my face till I got home but I’m keeping safe for someone else and this is the level of protection she is comfortable with. I am in no visceral fear, I’m even adjusting to the idea that there might not be a baseball season or even Falcon Ridge. That doesn’t mean I should not take every reasonable precaution. I know some people get nervous because they got within 6 feet of someone. Don’t be. Work to prevent it but the marginal risk is tiny. You drive in a car without fear yet tens of thousands die in accidents every year. That’s cumulative. Each trip is not that dangerous.
Why did I need to say that? Because people are terrible at judging risk. People fear sharks more than they do mosquitos even though mosquitos kills many orders of magnitude more people than sharks. That’s the way our brains are built if we rely on our gut feelings instead of thinking. When the COVID-19 pandemic started many people said things like, it’s no worse than the flu. Trump scoffed and said that he just found out how many people the flu kills so COVID-19 is no big deal. According to the CDC 55,672 people died of flu & influenza in 2017 (National Vital Statistics Report). The proper response should have been, Oh no! COVID-19 is just as bad as the flu! 2,606 people died at the World Trade center and the country was terrified. Now imagine that happening 20 times a year. That’s influenza in a normal year. That was a conservative count of the number of people that will die of COVID-19. Now they are talking about 200,000 deaths as the most likely. That’s a third the number of people that died of cancer in 2017. Imagine if the warning was the number of cancer deaths will rise by ⅓. When people hear that something increases the death rate of one particular type of cancer by 1% they get scared. We are talking more than the number of people that die of lung and colon cancer combined (Cancer Statistics Center).
That is the way that things should have been presented from the start. Numbers need perspective to be understood. Raw numbers in a vacuum tell us little. Usually the perspective is our experience, the problem is we don’t personally experience anything on these scales. Our gut can’t get it right. We need to use our higher brain functions and think. It’s not easy. In my mind this is not the end of the world, but it’s terrible. Compared to WWII, not as big a deal. Compared to earthquakes, something people are viscerally afraid of, an enormous deal. Our feelings about each and every danger is skewed, we need to look at them all to gain perspective. Then we can make rational judgements.
When Trump said he had no idea that so many people died of the flu, he was saying he have the required knowledge to be president. Perhaps that’s not quite right. If he didn’t know it but realized that meant he was totally ignorant on the subject and should rely on the judgments of people better equipped to deal with it, that would be fine. I’m pretty sure that if this had happened at the time of Obama he would have done intense studying until he knew enough to judge which experts he should be listening to.
I have a question for My Gentle Readers; do you think you could without studying pass a high school biology final? Don’t be ashamed if the answer is no, it’s no for most people. But if you answered no, then you should realize you don’t have the basic knowledge to weigh in on medical issues. There is a lot of valuable knowledge to be found on the internet. There is also a lot of total nonsense. You need a foundation to judge which is which.
One good that might come from COVID-19 is that people will become properly afraid of the flu, and the vaccination rate will increase enough for us to develop herd immunity. If we combine that with people being more careful about hand washing, if frequently washing our hands for 20 seconds becomes the norm, we should see a significant drop in not just the flu but most contagious diseases. The hand washing is no longer onerous. I was daydreaming earlier when I washed my hand and realized I only did a cursory job, maybe 10 seconds. Before I left the sink I did the count to 20. I’m even touching my face less often. That’s the hardest part. My face is now one giant itch that still happens when I think about it. The problem is my ponytail is touching my face. I moved it behind me that’s better. I’m not striving to be perfect, just as careful as I can reasonably be. I’m plucking all the low hanging fruit.
I hope you noticed that I sources my medical statistics. The first step in judging someone’s reliability is checking their sources. If it’s ihaveanaxetogrind.com be skeptical. If they give nothing, be skeptical.
I just had a first. I wrote 969 words and spell/grammar check found no errors. That has never happened before. I’m skeptical. I wonder if I someone changed a setting. I always make a few mistakes with commas.
Wise Madness 