Coronavirus: why such a huge reaction?
I’ve been trying to think why there has been such a huge reaction across the world to coronavirus, when there is so little reaction to other very serious problems. Which is not to say the virus situation is not serious and that precautions should not be taken. It is serious and of course we should try hard to contain it. But, it's worth considering: why so much reaction to this problem and comparatively much less to others?
Here are some comparative figures to set the situation:
- Coronavirus deaths in the world so far: about 34,000
- Flu/influenza deaths in 2018-2019 season: about 60,000
- Deaths by road accidents: 1.25 million every year
- Work related accidental deaths: 2.3 million people a year
And country specific:
- Alcohol related deaths in UK: around 9,000 a year
Coronavirus deaths in UK so far: 1, 300
- Death in the USA from guns: 15,381 gun deaths (and 29,568 injuries) in 2019
Coronavirus deaths in the USA so far: about 2,500
So its clear that we face various problems that are very large, but about which very little is being done, by comparison to the huge effort to contain the virus. Here are my guesses as to why there has been such a big reaction to the virus compared to these other problems:
1. The ‘frog slowing boiling’ problem - the car problem has slowly built up for about 100 years, so we don’t notice well about how much it’s damaging us. It's become a blind spot. Same with guns and alcohol and even the flu. But the virus has hit us suddenly, like a flame bursting up and blinding us.
2. Good aspects and a good image associated with cars, guns and alcohol (in various ways and to different degrees in different groups) which means that a lot of us don’t really want to face up to their bad aspects. We deny it, get angry when people point it out, push it to the back of our minds. Yet the deaths don't go away.
3. Coronavirus draws out our instinctual reaction of physical disgust, due to 100,000s of years of human evolution. But cars, guns and alcohol don’t, because they have not been around long enough. But why doesn’t the yearly seasonal flu make us react so badly? Why so much greater reaction this time compared to the reaction to Ebola which had a far higher death rate, or the 2009 H1N1 pandemic which killed far more people? Ebola was less contagious, so that seems one reasonable point. H1N1 killed a lower percentage of people who got it, but was highly contagious and spread quickly. One possible reason is that those past pandemics raised our general awareness of our weakness to such problems, so that now, in this pandemic, there is a willingness to respond quickly and strongly.
4. Cars, guns and alcohol make profits. Saving money by keeping work places un-safe increases profits, spending money to make them more safe decreases profits. But the virus decreases profits. It also damages the income of individuals and families, especially shops and the self employed — to the extent that many people might soon run out of savings if the virus lasts for months. Some are suggesting we may need to instigate wide sweeping economic reforms to take us away from free market capitalism where only the wealthy can pay for health checks and weather the virus storm on their savings, and where basic supplies run out very quickly...towards provision of basic income, writing off of debt, centrally organised supply of basics as if it was war time, free health checks for all and government control of even private health centers (this is already happening in Spain).
5. We don’t know if we will get it. It’s a mysterious disease that apparently healthy people can carry. We feel that if we drink sensibly, drive carefully, dont use guns and are careful at work then we will probably be ok. But the virus might hit us tomorrow, from various only partially foreseeable aspects.
But that holds true for car deaths also - no one in the history of the world KNEW they were going to get killed by a car later that day. It's also a mysterious killer than strikes suddenly while we are going about our normal life. So why are we not doing a lot more to reduce the much larger chance of being killed in a road accident? Despite the growth rate of the virus we are still more than 50 times more likely to be killed in a road accident.
6. We don’t know if the virus is going to get MUCH worse, or if we are going to tackle it and get it under control. This involves mathematic aspects like the epidemic curve, exponential growth and the fatality rate, and the legendary 'simple math'...and many people would say that THIS is the main reason for the huge reaction. The virus might grow to affect a hugely greater number of people, and that is worrying, of course. And precautions to try to prevent this are sensible.
But, it still doesn’t explain why comparatively so little reaction to problems that are ALREADY very large. Not potentially, but actually. Like gun deaths or deaths by road accident or smoking. Surely, regardless of growth rates and contagion factor etc the fact of the huge death AMOUNT is enough reason for us to make a big effort to reduce road accidents and work accidents, no? But a big effort is not being made. In many countries there appears to be no effort whatsoever on these huge problems...
And as to problem that might get much worse, how about environmental damage. It’s taken us decades to get to even a half-assed response across the world to environmental damage, despite many expert saying that its getting critical, the accumulated damage is reaching the point of global catastrophe and that the fatalities in humans and animals may be huge, in the 100s of millions. Yet we are still not doing much about it, not compared to the huge global response in a matter of only a few months to the virus. It’s good that we react to reduce it, of course — but why so little effort, comparatively, to combat the other things that might get a lot worse and various things that are already very bad?
7. Do we dislike and mistrust other human beings? The virus is spread through contact with other humans. That makes them dangerous. Perhaps there is something deep inside us that makes us react with powerful disgust to a disease passed on from the body of another human being and we gladly accept policies of isolation and limitation on contact and travel. This may be just a version of point 3. But since guns and alcohol and cars kill us via other humans why so little reaction there? And why so little reaction to the flu, which is also passed on by the bodies of other humans?
8. Those other larger issues are not considered as ‘news worthy’. They have been around for years and so perhaps some media outlets react with a callous, ‘Cars kill a million a year - yeah, that’s old news!’ Perhaps the fact its on our newspapers and TV and internet everyday has caused a big reaction in actual policies. If we had ‘car killers!’ headlines on every media channel everyday it also might result in a much bigger campaign against cars.
Imagine, for instance, that is was suddenly revealed on various media that microwave ovens were a killer machine - they kill more than 1 million people a year in explosions. There was a problem with them that means there is 0.5% or whatever small but worrying chance of it exploding and killing you, every time you use it. Would we just ignore that or would we try to fundamentally redesign microwaves to make them more safe? That's not a simple as it may look. Firstly it depends on income of the user and the amount of government and companies research funding given to the problem, and what the benefits of microwaves were, what the alternative ways of cooking were, etc.
In the case of microwaves its highly likely that sales and use would go down drastically, over a short period, less than 6 months. Because they dont cost much, dont bring in huge profits and we have easily accessible other ways of heating up food. In the case of cars, they do cost a lot, they do bring in huge profits and we dont have easily accessible other ways of getting around. Or rather, we do: we have walking, cycling, the bus and train etc. But various psychological, capitalist profit based, infrastructural and other systemic reasons get in the way of using those other forms. Therefore we more or less continue to use the killer machine, despite the more than one million deaths its causes a year.
9. Something IS being down to reduce deaths by cars, alcohol, guns etc. Deaths here are normally going down across many countries, year by year. Clearly thats very good. But its not a good reason to put in so small an amount of effort to reduce such BIG problems, that kills millions a year (as a fact not a possible future problem). Surely, regardless of growth rates and contagion etc the fact of the huge death AMOUNT is enough reason for us to make a big effort to reduce road accidents, no? But a big effort is not being made. Is it acceptable to continue making a small effort to reduce car deaths by say, 100,000 a year, when a larger effort could reduce it by one million? Why are we not making that larger effort?
10. Urgency. This is an obvious point, connected to point 6 and not something I will argue with. The virus needs to be contained soon, efforts need to be made now. We have only a few weeks or months to make that big effort. Whereas we probably still have years or even decades to make a big effort for environmental damage.
Yet, the point is still relevant here that since car deaths or work related deaths are already at huge amounts, doesn't that also make them urgent? Not urgent in time, we could argue, but certainly urgent for ethical reasons, for the sake of the sheer number of people that die from them. A further million people, at least, will die this year, in 2020 from road accidents because we are not doing enough to tackle this problem. That means someone you know, or maybe you.
This is not exhaustive, there are probably other aspects to consider. And please note, I am not saying anything negative or insulting here. All these points are just possible aspects, just mulling things over. The virus is a very important issue, and I am not saying we shouldn’t react strongly. We should contain it, we should reduce it — of course. The deaths of the people its claimed and will claim is a tragedy. It may get much worse, indeed. Let’s hope it does not.
I’m simply wondering this: why we are not reacting as strongly or quickly to the many other very serious problems we face? And, shouldn't we do so?
I’ve been trying to think why there has been such a huge reaction across the world to coronavirus, when there is so little reaction to other very serious problems. Which is not to say the virus situation is not serious and that precautions should not be taken. It is serious and of course we should try hard to contain it. But, it's worth considering: why so much reaction to this problem and comparatively much less to others?
Here are some comparative figures to set the situation:
- Coronavirus deaths in the world so far: about 34,000
- Flu/influenza deaths in 2018-2019 season: about 60,000
- Deaths by road accidents: 1.25 million every year
- Work related accidental deaths: 2.3 million people a year
And country specific:
- Alcohol related deaths in UK: around 9,000 a year
Coronavirus deaths in UK so far: 1, 300
- Death in the USA from guns: 15,381 gun deaths (and 29,568 injuries) in 2019
Coronavirus deaths in the USA so far: about 2,500
So its clear that we face various problems that are very large, but about which very little is being done, by comparison to the huge effort to contain the virus. Here are my guesses as to why there has been such a big reaction to the virus compared to these other problems:
1. The ‘frog slowing boiling’ problem - the car problem has slowly built up for about 100 years, so we don’t notice well about how much it’s damaging us. It's become a blind spot. Same with guns and alcohol and even the flu. But the virus has hit us suddenly, like a flame bursting up and blinding us.
2. Good aspects and a good image associated with cars, guns and alcohol (in various ways and to different degrees in different groups) which means that a lot of us don’t really want to face up to their bad aspects. We deny it, get angry when people point it out, push it to the back of our minds. Yet the deaths don't go away.
3. Coronavirus draws out our instinctual reaction of physical disgust, due to 100,000s of years of human evolution. But cars, guns and alcohol don’t, because they have not been around long enough. But why doesn’t the yearly seasonal flu make us react so badly? Why so much greater reaction this time compared to the reaction to Ebola which had a far higher death rate, or the 2009 H1N1 pandemic which killed far more people? Ebola was less contagious, so that seems one reasonable point. H1N1 killed a lower percentage of people who got it, but was highly contagious and spread quickly. One possible reason is that those past pandemics raised our general awareness of our weakness to such problems, so that now, in this pandemic, there is a willingness to respond quickly and strongly.
4. Cars, guns and alcohol make profits. Saving money by keeping work places un-safe increases profits, spending money to make them more safe decreases profits. But the virus decreases profits. It also damages the income of individuals and families, especially shops and the self employed — to the extent that many people might soon run out of savings if the virus lasts for months. Some are suggesting we may need to instigate wide sweeping economic reforms to take us away from free market capitalism where only the wealthy can pay for health checks and weather the virus storm on their savings, and where basic supplies run out very quickly...towards provision of basic income, writing off of debt, centrally organised supply of basics as if it was war time, free health checks for all and government control of even private health centers (this is already happening in Spain).
5. We don’t know if we will get it. It’s a mysterious disease that apparently healthy people can carry. We feel that if we drink sensibly, drive carefully, dont use guns and are careful at work then we will probably be ok. But the virus might hit us tomorrow, from various only partially foreseeable aspects.
But that holds true for car deaths also - no one in the history of the world KNEW they were going to get killed by a car later that day. It's also a mysterious killer than strikes suddenly while we are going about our normal life. So why are we not doing a lot more to reduce the much larger chance of being killed in a road accident? Despite the growth rate of the virus we are still more than 50 times more likely to be killed in a road accident.
6. We don’t know if the virus is going to get MUCH worse, or if we are going to tackle it and get it under control. This involves mathematic aspects like the epidemic curve, exponential growth and the fatality rate, and the legendary 'simple math'...and many people would say that THIS is the main reason for the huge reaction. The virus might grow to affect a hugely greater number of people, and that is worrying, of course. And precautions to try to prevent this are sensible.
But, it still doesn’t explain why comparatively so little reaction to problems that are ALREADY very large. Not potentially, but actually. Like gun deaths or deaths by road accident or smoking. Surely, regardless of growth rates and contagion factor etc the fact of the huge death AMOUNT is enough reason for us to make a big effort to reduce road accidents and work accidents, no? But a big effort is not being made. In many countries there appears to be no effort whatsoever on these huge problems...
And as to problem that might get much worse, how about environmental damage. It’s taken us decades to get to even a half-assed response across the world to environmental damage, despite many expert saying that its getting critical, the accumulated damage is reaching the point of global catastrophe and that the fatalities in humans and animals may be huge, in the 100s of millions. Yet we are still not doing much about it, not compared to the huge global response in a matter of only a few months to the virus. It’s good that we react to reduce it, of course — but why so little effort, comparatively, to combat the other things that might get a lot worse and various things that are already very bad?
7. Do we dislike and mistrust other human beings? The virus is spread through contact with other humans. That makes them dangerous. Perhaps there is something deep inside us that makes us react with powerful disgust to a disease passed on from the body of another human being and we gladly accept policies of isolation and limitation on contact and travel. This may be just a version of point 3. But since guns and alcohol and cars kill us via other humans why so little reaction there? And why so little reaction to the flu, which is also passed on by the bodies of other humans?
8. Those other larger issues are not considered as ‘news worthy’. They have been around for years and so perhaps some media outlets react with a callous, ‘Cars kill a million a year - yeah, that’s old news!’ Perhaps the fact its on our newspapers and TV and internet everyday has caused a big reaction in actual policies. If we had ‘car killers!’ headlines on every media channel everyday it also might result in a much bigger campaign against cars.
Imagine, for instance, that is was suddenly revealed on various media that microwave ovens were a killer machine - they kill more than 1 million people a year in explosions. There was a problem with them that means there is 0.5% or whatever small but worrying chance of it exploding and killing you, every time you use it. Would we just ignore that or would we try to fundamentally redesign microwaves to make them more safe? That's not a simple as it may look. Firstly it depends on income of the user and the amount of government and companies research funding given to the problem, and what the benefits of microwaves were, what the alternative ways of cooking were, etc.
In the case of microwaves its highly likely that sales and use would go down drastically, over a short period, less than 6 months. Because they dont cost much, dont bring in huge profits and we have easily accessible other ways of heating up food. In the case of cars, they do cost a lot, they do bring in huge profits and we dont have easily accessible other ways of getting around. Or rather, we do: we have walking, cycling, the bus and train etc. But various psychological, capitalist profit based, infrastructural and other systemic reasons get in the way of using those other forms. Therefore we more or less continue to use the killer machine, despite the more than one million deaths its causes a year.
9. Something IS being down to reduce deaths by cars, alcohol, guns etc. Deaths here are normally going down across many countries, year by year. Clearly thats very good. But its not a good reason to put in so small an amount of effort to reduce such BIG problems, that kills millions a year (as a fact not a possible future problem). Surely, regardless of growth rates and contagion etc the fact of the huge death AMOUNT is enough reason for us to make a big effort to reduce road accidents, no? But a big effort is not being made. Is it acceptable to continue making a small effort to reduce car deaths by say, 100,000 a year, when a larger effort could reduce it by one million? Why are we not making that larger effort?
10. Urgency. This is an obvious point, connected to point 6 and not something I will argue with. The virus needs to be contained soon, efforts need to be made now. We have only a few weeks or months to make that big effort. Whereas we probably still have years or even decades to make a big effort for environmental damage.
Yet, the point is still relevant here that since car deaths or work related deaths are already at huge amounts, doesn't that also make them urgent? Not urgent in time, we could argue, but certainly urgent for ethical reasons, for the sake of the sheer number of people that die from them. A further million people, at least, will die this year, in 2020 from road accidents because we are not doing enough to tackle this problem. That means someone you know, or maybe you.
This is not exhaustive, there are probably other aspects to consider. And please note, I am not saying anything negative or insulting here. All these points are just possible aspects, just mulling things over. The virus is a very important issue, and I am not saying we shouldn’t react strongly. We should contain it, we should reduce it — of course. The deaths of the people its claimed and will claim is a tragedy. It may get much worse, indeed. Let’s hope it does not.
I’m simply wondering this: why we are not reacting as strongly or quickly to the many other very serious problems we face? And, shouldn't we do so?