Yesterday I noted that, 18 months after the start of the pandemic, a sizeable chunk of Americans still dramatically overestimate the risks of Covid. In a recent poll, more than one third said the risk of being hospitalised if you’re not vaccinated is at least 50%.
Of course, you’d expect some people to get the answer wrong just because we’re dealing with a small quantity, and there’s always going to be some degree of overestimation. But many people were off by a factor more than 10. What accounts for this?
Interestingly, Democrat voters’ guesses were much higher than Republican voters’ – about twice as many Democrats said the risk of being hospitalised if you’re not vaccinated is at least 50%. This suggests a role for ideology.
Throughout the pandemic, the ‘Democrat position’ has been to support restrictions and mandates, whereas the ‘Republican position’ has been to oppose such measures. This is clearly visible in a plot of U.S. states by average stringency index. Almost all the ‘red’ states are on the left-hand side, while almost all the ‘blue’ states are on the right.
Given that partisans (on all sides) like to avoid cognitive dissonance, they tend to adopt beliefs that are consistent with their party’s platform. Since Democrat politicians have been busy imposing all sorts of restrictions and mandates, Democrat voters have adopted beliefs that imply those measures were justified.
Most survey respondents don’t know numbers like ‘the risk of hospitalisation for people who aren’t vaccinated’ off the top of their head. Instead, they probably make a guess based on all the relevant information they can recall.
Democrat voters, who’ve spent the pandemic consuming media like MSNBC, CNN and NPR, will recall numerous incidents of pundits saying that Covid is extremely dangerous, and we have to do whatever we can to stop the spread.
They will also recall that they were locked down for months, that their kids’ schools were closed, and that they had to wear a mask whenever they went to the grocery store.
Putting all this information together, they will tend to assume that the risk of being hospitalised from Covid is extremely high. ‘Why else,’ they might ask, ‘would there have been so many restrictions?’
Note: Republicans also overestimated the risk of being hospitalised from Covid, albeit to a lesser extent than Democrats. This indicates that people’s skewed risk perceptions cannot be blamed solely on the content of left-wing media (or the policies implemented in ‘blue’ states).
The psychological quirk that may account for people’s skewed risk perceptions has a name in psychology: the availability heuristic. As Steven Pinker notes, “people estimate the probability of an event or the frequency of a kind of thing by the ease with which instances come to mind”.
Because plane crashes always make the news, people tend to overestimate the risks of air travel. And they may overestimate the risks of Covid for the same reason.
Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve been treated to morbid ‘daily death numbers’ – but for only one cause of death. Perhaps if these figures had been reported for all causes of death, people’s risk perceptions would be slightly less skewed. (Or perhaps they’d just be terrified of everything…)
During a pandemic, we obviously do want people to take precautions; we don’t want them nonchalantly walking into a care home when they have a high fever and a nasty cough. Yet – contrary to what some in government seem to believe – we don’t want people to be utterly terrified either.
There’s been so much attention on people claiming Covid is “just the flu” that the media has largely ignored the other end of the spectrum: people who believe Covid is the bubonic plague!
We can agree it’s bad if people underestimate the risks. But it’s also bad if they overestimate the risks. We want them to have the right risk perceptions. That way, they can make informed decisions.
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“There’s been so much attention on people claiming COVID is “just the flu” that the media has largely ignored the other end of the spectrum: people who believe COVID is the bubonic plague!“
All very well, but the former is objectively correct, and the latter incorrect.
Granted there are differences and the risks of covid are somewhat higher, especially to the elderly, but to a first approximation, covid is best viewed precisely as “just a [new] flu-type disease”, in the sense that it should be regarded as in the flu category – a background disease of high infectiousness and usually very low threat.
The obsessives who say “ah, but covid isn’t flu because.” and go on to list endless detailed differences simply miss the point, and in many cases do so with the specific intention of maximising fear of covid.
“During a pandemic, we obviously do want people to take precautions; we don’t want them nonchalantly walking into a care home when they have a high fever and a nasty cough. “
Nobody should ever be walking into a care home with a high fever and a nasty cough. Colds and flu’s often finish off the elderly and terminally unwell. That’s why pneumonia used to be known as “the old man’s friend”.
As far as the addition of covid to the four cold-causing coronaviruses is concerned, a far better guide would have been Donald Henderson’s advice that:
“Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.“
It’s called propaganda
Massive Buy Of Coronavirus Testing Machines In Wuhan Before Pandemic Hit
https://rumble.com/vnbutq-massive-buy-of-coronavirus-testing-machines-in-wuhan-before-pandemic-hit.html
Upcoming events – don’t expect someone to fight this on your behalf
Friday 8th October 11am
Parade through Wokingham Town Centre with signs and strange masks like in Edinburgh above
– please bring your carnival/Guy Fawkes/Fancy Dress masks and overalls if you have them – if not please come anyway
Meet in the Cockpit Path car park in the centre of the town RG40 2HD
Saturday 16th October 1pm
MEGA Hold the Line Stand by the Road event
– followed by walk to the Town Centre
Combined Berks/Bucks/Oxon/Surrey/Hants
Bring your Yellow Boards and other banners –
Stafferton Way Maidenhead SL6 1AY
Stand in the Park Make friends – keep sane – talk freedom and have a laugh
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens RG40 2HD Sundays 10am
behind the Cockpit Path car park in the centre of the town
Bracknell South Hill Park
Sundays 10am & Wednesdays 2pm
Join our Telegram group http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Reading River Promenade Sundays 10am
Join our Telegram group https://t.me/standindparkreading
I’d go further and point at the (literally) incredible claim that there was essentially no influenza, globally, at all last Winter. The US CDC, for example, reported that just 1,675 (0.2%) of respiratory specimens tested positive for influenza compared to hundreds of thousands (26-30%) normally.
The CDC’s interpretation was that COVID-1984 measures must have worked to eliminate influenza… but not COVID-1984.
A less ideological interpretation might be that you don’t find what you’re not looking for, that any respiratory symptoms, illness and death were chalked up to COVID-1984, and that of the testing that was done, laboratories were… encouraged? incentivised? … to find the New Coofs, not the older, less terrifying version.
note the CDC will no longer be using the PCR past next Jan 22-they want a test that can differentiate between Covid and flu. Makes you wonder
Under the hand of Mrs Wallensky, the cdc is just one more organisation, like let’s say, the WHO, that can no longer be trusted. Any gov’t that over resides it’s own vaccine experts to implement their own agenda is a danger to all.
It is ‘just the flu’.
BUT, happily, the young are virtually immune to covid: the flu is much more dangerous to them.
Maybe better: The flu itself is not “just the flu”. It’s a pretty nasty, infectious disease which kills a fair lot of people every year. But as there’s nothing we (as mankind) can do about that, we’ll simply have to live despite of it. The idea that man must be the master of the earth, capable of controlling or preventing absolutely everything on it just didn’t cross anybody’s sane mind before the thoroughly areligious wokesters took over.
Ah, informed decisions, that is sooo last decade.
To be fair, we are informed of the State’s decisions on our behalf.
What are we doing to stop the Covid Passes being rolled out in the UK? I know, let’s talk about the Democrats and Republicans in America! That should do it!
When’s the next peaceful protest? And just how many millions of Brits are walking around now controlled by the nanobots in their blood? Do their eyes glow?
How are things in Finland?
You could make a list here of all your massive successes in fighting the Finnish establishment, to give us encouragement.
Doctor Performs Blood and Immune System Test Before and After COVID Vaccination, The Alarming Results Motivate Him to Share This Video
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/04/doctor-performs-blood-and-immune-system-test-before-and-after-covid-vaccination-the-alarming-results-motivate-him-to-share-this-video/
Why Do You Think Typing Like This Is Persuasive?
He/she didn’t type it. Copied and pasted if you clicked the link.
And it is well worth a watch. The results give pause for thought.
Thanks for sharing.
Why isn’t everyone who has had Covid tested for immunity?
Share with every brainwashed person you know who drank the koolaid.
Just after a volcano eruption or a major earthquake, insurance against these things is sold in droves, as time goes on (and the risk of another one increases) the coverage lapses.
As a consequence of the additional 10% of drivers on the road in the year following 9/11 it is estimated that more additional road deaths occurred than lives lost in the attacks.
Humans are terrible at judging risk and rarely consider the bigger picture or the law of unintended consequences.
Welcome to 2020/21.
Project Veritas Undercover Highlights Three Pfizer Scientists: “Basically, our organization is run on COVID money now”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On5RYFbcxWY
Worth a watch. Nothing we didn’t know, but interesting to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.
People’s risk perceptions are always skewed. That’s why it is important to properly inform people of risks before getting them to make decisions that depend on their risks.
The true problems come when people in positions of authority make decisions that will affect great numbers of people based on their incorrect understanding of the risks, or, worse, when they make decisions based on the masses incorrect understanding of the risks.
For example, at the moment the UK government has a public consultation on whether to have a vaccine mandate for many aspects of life — but there’s no point in asking the public if they have massively over or underestimated the risks from covid or the jabs.
Quite a few observers noted that the covid panic was based on an “availablity cascade” (before, in many cases, they themselves either fell victim to it or decided it was too dangerous to continue to resist it).
Here was a college newspaper pointing it out in the US in the still relatively sane – compared with what was to come – early March 2020:
“It’s happening with COVID-19, it happens with politics, and it happens with the environment: tragedy spurs paranoia, paranoia attracts the media, the media stirs up more paranoia, and the cycle repeats. This phenomenon is known as an “availability cascade,””
Why are people’s risk perceptions so skewed?
Well, they are often skewed at the best of times, but in the case of covid, the main reason is relentless propaganda from governments, big tech, media and other bodies, all with their own evil agendas to further. There have been lies of omission, blatant untruths, and suppression of the truth.
Precisely. The blanket propaganda psy-op has built on (almost) universal innumeracy in the area of probability; a highly malleable population being beaten.
And the active suppression of any opposing viewpoint.
i find the whole thing increasingly tedious
it’s a nasty cold that finishes off old people – just like other colds
they are always worrying us about something – reds under the bed, everything causes cancer, sugar, salt
who gives a fuck? you live and at some point you die. if you die when you are old its a bonus. this pandemic is a complete nothingburger
Other causes of death are available.
my great uncle died last year at the age of 99 after 10 years in a care home. he was pretty uncommunicative for the last few years
he had covid, got over it then died 6 months later
my mum demanded an autopsy and enquiry to find out the cause of death. ‘old age’ you mentalist!
Green indoctrination, essentially.
Long before lockdown, decades before lockdown, doomsday cultism has been taught as science, preparing the ground for the current ongoing disaster.
Risk perceptions are so skewed because most people make decisions on emotional rather than rational grounds.
In any normal kind of world, there would be wise people who understand this leading the country and editing newspapers and they would be doing their utmost to explain the true levels of risk (rather as Chris Whitty did at the very beginning of the “pandemic” before he was given the “Ipcress File” treatment along with Boris and all the other government figures and started fomenting panic rather than reducing it.
The absence of any articles in the mainstream media comparing the risks from this Coronavirus to other viruses, and explaining the relatively low levels of risk of the virus for people under 65, was an early sign for me that the “pandemic” was being deliberately exaggerated for some other purposes.
As someone who is numerate and who was educated long enough ago to have an enquiring mind, a quick look at the numbers myself convinced me that there was nothing much to worry about for most people.
However most people are not numerate, and are products of an education system which taught them what to think rather than how to think, and so their fate was entirely in the hands of media and politicians who do not have their best interests in mind.
Plurality in the media would do a great deal of good. The malign influence of billionaire’s money is always talked about, but not the malign influence of the NUJ and their reporting guidelines
And the BBC’s “Trusted News Initiative”.
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2020/trusted-news-initiative-vaccine-disinformation.
Which, as it admits itself on its own pages, is basically interfering in the election process in multiple countries.
‘Other posts seek to downplay the risks of coronavirus”
Well, Johnson and Hancock did that numerous times last year – clearly stating that ‘the vast majority of people who develop Covid-19 will not die’!
The WHO’s stats show that 0.2% of the world’s population died of Covid-19 in 2020.
It’s the BBC and the other MSM propaganda outlets that are misrepresenting the truth.
“the relatively low levels of risk of the virus for people under 65“
What is often missed is that the risk is still nothing to write home about when older groups are considered. Older people are more susceptible to death!
Very true.
Maybe we should discuss the latest video from Project Veritas (https://youtu.be/On5RYFbcxWY) which confirms that this is all about money, not about people’s safety, that Pfizer knows their vaccines cause myocarditis, that Pfizer is working to remove treatments from the public knowledge, and that Pfizer knows that natural immunity is way better than the vaccine.
It’s a good video with a couple of soon to be ex-Pfizer employees saying lots of things we have known for months but it’s interesting to see it is all common knowledge inside Pfizer too.
Hopefully videos like this will wake up more people (not the 40% who are deeply hypnotised by the propaganda but the 40% who have gone along with the narrative for an easy life without paying too much attention to it all).
People go mad in crowds but recover their sanity one by one…
In for an early morning showing of No Time To Die, nearly empty screen but look at these 2 young fit people. As a non-believer I just can’t understand how scared people have been and still are.
If you asked them what they were scared of, would they actually know?
Perhaps they don’t want to be shaken or stirred.
I don’t think they are actually scared. They wouldn’t be out otherwise. I think this is more about them showing everyone how virtuous they are. And clever. They get to look down at the stupid people walking around without a mask.
I for one appreciate them wearing masks. It allows me to identify who might be double jabbed, and I keep my distance accordingly.
Plenty of people are scared though. I don’t think the tiny old lady I witnessed santising her trolley handle whilst wearing a mask and gloves, this morning, was doing it for the image.
Of course. I never said there aren’t any scared people. That old lady panicked at shopping won’t be going out to the theatre/cinema mixing with all those unmasked people.
Fucking madness.
People are stupid, stupid, stupid…
They are. Not because they aren’t capable of getting it, but because they refuse to see the obvious even as it destroys their world.
They will not see that they are in anyway stupid and will 100% believe they are fighting the good fight despite those THEY consider to be stupid – us. There is a sizable percentage of citizens who will now never shed the notion we are living in a permanent aura of disease.
I have tonnes of respect for the Daily Sceptic and its attempts to question the covid insanity in a way that appears to be balanced, sensible and fact-based.
However, at some point, that line is going to be unsustainable.
It is clearly to anyone who is willing to look that covid isn’t really very dangerous – there are far more dangerous things we live with – and that the incompetence and stupidity of those in charge are not enough to explain what is going on.
The covid “danger” is completely manufactured. The response is disproportionate and clearly coordinated between states. As the evidence mounts of this and the measures become ever more draconian, it will simply be impossible to deny the absence of very powerful bad actors without appearing silly or spectacularly naive.
“it will simply be impossible to deny the absence [involvement?] of very powerful bad actors“
I doubt anyone at the DS would “deny the involvement of very powerful bad actors”.
The only issues in dispute surely are “who” and “how powerful”?
Toby does. All the time and much to the fury of Delingpole.
I don’t think so. I think he denies the idea that everything is coordinated and planned by one particular group of bad actors.
It’s really not that difficult.
Subject a population to blanket propaganda – such as that which has been a major, explicit psy-ops government policy, and skewed perceptions are precisely what you get. Censor other easy sources of information, and you double down.
Then add in the reinforcement of peer pressure because ‘everyone knows’.
And stir
‘Nuff said.
Yes, I think it’s just this. No need to over-think it. What it cries out for is something that restricts the ability of a government to brainwash its people – easier said than done.
The propaganda, green propaganda, long preceded lockdown, making lockdown politically popular.
I suspect a confounding factor might be concept of right/wrong as absolutes, which doesn’t take natural variety into account. e.g.
1 Risk assessment of over 70s and/or immunocompromised likely to be higher than for younger and not immunocompromised. i.e. Both correct.
2 Life experience:
Those who’ve been through a rough time likely to assess risk lower than those who haven’t because they’re used to being at risk and have had practice dealing with it, which makes it safer for them.
For those who haven’t been though a rough time, risk is unfamiliar, unknown, which increases risk for them due to no practice in dealing with it.
So again, both personal assessments appropriate as some relevant skill reduces risk.
3 Personality:
Some individuals are naturally more ‘laid-back’ than others, so view risk as less. When cool, calm and collected we can think more clearly than when not cool. Thus a ‘laid-back’ type may be able to deal with risk more safely.
Some ‘watch their feet’ and look before they leap – going cautiously, avoiding risks.
Others watch the horizon – seemingly taking risk. That can either be unintentional, they simply don’t see it in time to not step in it or, intentional because they can see other side of the spot of risk; see their way through it, which makes taking risk safer than when you can’t see through, around or beyond it.
In summary:
Risk isn’t an absolute; it varies with natural variety of many aspects of life.
No, “we” don’t want “the people” to do anything special during a pandemic. That’s the sort of obnoxious authoritarian thinking typical for every government. There is no “we” versus “the people”. There are free, thinking individuals who decide about their own – and by a trivial extension also their collective – fate/future.
Amongst other reasons, we have a news cartel “Trusted News Initiative”, which engages in “news fixing” rather like a industrial cartel engages in “price fixing”.
They’ve only been reporting anything vaguely “narrative” friendly and censoring anything outside that for a long while now.
TNI just formalises the narrative cartel, it’s certainly what THEY WANT YOU TO KNOW and that makes it the opposite of news (what someone DOESN’T want you to know (which is why you’ll not see the Project Veritas video on any BBC “news” pages) ).
One thing which Professor Mattias Desmet talked about in his evidence to the Reiner Fuellmich committee is the fact that a lot of people suffer from what he calls “free-floating anxiety” which they are only vaguely aware of. This is particularly true of people who have few anchors in life (religion, close family, close association with a particular place – “citizens of nowhere”). Desmet says people like this are more prone to becoming victims of a mass psychological event like we have seen with the pandemic.
He says the way this works is something comes along (in this case a “deadly” pandemic) which gives the people with the free-floating anxiety something to attach it to. The virus is something bad out there that they can focus all their previously unfocused worries on. Added to which, the fact that there is a huge group of people out there who are also focused on the same worries gives these people a sense of group identity. All of this makes them, ironically, feel less anxious. In the same way, people who provide evidence that there is no pandemic, or that masks don’t make you safer, or that vaccines can cause harm, threaten their new-found feeling of security and group identity, so they react against those people very strongly. They can’t face returning to a pre-COVID world with all of that free-floating anxiety. They have essentially become victims of a cult.
I think this is another good reason why many people cannot see the risk of COVID in context. They simply don’t want to. The existence of a deadly virus they can worry about and a big group of people who are also scared by it gives these people’s lives a focus and purpose that they never had before. Whereas those of us who are not “citizens of nowhere” and have other things in our lives which bring meaning and purpose – close family, belonging to a particular community, religion, regular face to face contact with other people – are secure enough that we don’t need something external to worry about or a new group to belong to.
Of course all of the authorities’ policies – lockdowns, mask wearing, social distancing – have had the result of causing people to become more and more isolated, making them even more vulnerable to the COVID cult and less likely to see the risks of COVID in proportion. I’m sure this is not an accident.
It seems to make sense for what I would call the ‘born to be married’ types but is incorrect for the ‘born to be free’ types, whom it doesn’t mention.
That’s a quality summary of the psychology what has happened to the masses. I like the concept of ‘Mass Psychosis’, this runs right alongside it. If it actually doesn’t explain it.
Cheers.
The risk is not understood – and what is understood is through an extremely partisan lens. Republicans underestimate the risk. Democrats vastly overstate it. By my calculations using CDC data, the risk of hospitalization if infected is around 5%.
The American media has generated so much fear through its daily tally of case counts and fatalities. Case counts is fairly meaningless data, since it tells us nothing about severity. And both are subject to misperceptions without knowing the demographic data on who is dying (answer: mainly the elderly).
The media messaging has been rather successful, at least in liberal parts of the country, in getting people to get themselves injected with an unnecessary vaccine with no long-term safety data.
It’s all rather amazing.
“Republicans underestimate the risk. Democrats vastly overstate it.“
This kind of even-handedness is inappropriate here I think.
For the purpose of assessing personal risks from a disease, the difference between 1% and 5% hospitalisation is not really important (especially when it is so dramatically skewed to the already very old or ill). The real risk to the vast majority of people is accurately assessed at “very low”, covering this whole range. In other words, in the same category as flu’s and colds, that we live with by getting on with our lives, mostly, unless we are actually ill.
Granted the difference between 1% and 5% is very important for healthcare managers and policymakers, in terms of planning and service provision, but that’s a separate point.
Whereas the difference between 5% and 30%+, which is what the majority of Democrats reportedly thought it was, for un”vaccinated”, is colossal and would require an entirely different kind of response. Even potentially a panic response, in fact, of the kind we have seen.
On covid, many Republicans are broadly right, most Democrats are flat wrong.
The quirck that may account for people’s skewed risk perception is called: Joe Biden. This guy is responsible for causing a major divide between the vaxxed and unvaxxed in the USA. I have never seen such a division, intentionally caused by a POTUS. Never. I keep asking the question, threatened, bought, both?
This is another flu. I fact its more easily treatable than the flu. IVM, Zinc, Vit D, Doxycyline and Azithromycin to name all the ones tried and tested to show it helps hospitalised patients.
Mike Yeadon also mentioned the treatability of this around a year ago.