Originally Posted by
ScepticalOptomist
This has been the problem all along - people just see numbers with no context and allow themselves to be suckered in by fear mongering.
80,000 lives lost is sad for sure, but context is everything. I acknowledge CV has killed people in large numbers, I just don’t buy the mass fear campaign.
A lot of this has to do with an individual’s propensity to defer to experts. Either you agree with the overwhelming professional consensus on an issue or you look for the few dissenters.
In the case of Covid, it’s a bit clearer because we have examples of countries who have gone against the professional advice (Sweden, US and more recently India) and those who have adopted the most conservative approaches (Australia and NZ). I know where I would prefer to be.
Australia has fared very well through this crisis. We are coming out with a strong economy, a healthy population and a health care system which retains capacity. Domestic life is almost entirely unaffected. No wonder most people are happy with the federal and state responses to Covid.