The #coronavirus didn't just win by infecting the body.
It won by infecting the mind.
[1/
Physically, this virus is not that lethal.
It kills ~1% of the ppl it infects.
About half don't even notice it.
Although it's ~10-15x worse than the flu, Ebola is ~30x worse than the #coronavirus
But that's not its weakness.
It's its strength.
[2/
By only killing a few, and not causing symptoms in many, most people's experience is that it isn't a big deal. That lets ppl's guard down.
But not only that.
[3/
By spreading mostly before ppl have symptoms, it's difficult to catch.
[4/
By not showing symptoms that are very visually striking—like for example bleeding through the eyes, or causing excruciating pain and screams—it doesn't raise ppl's instincts of fear.
[5/
By prying on older ppl—instead of the young, like the 1918 flu—, it severs fewer years when it kills. That gives many ppl a license to think it doesn't matter that much.
[6/
By infecting the respiratory system, it doesn't require specific actions. Humans spread it just by being.
It's easy to change some interactions.
It's much harder to avoid any interaction.
[7/
We can't see it.
We can't touch it.
We can't feel it.
We can't smell it.
We can't notice it.
Until it's too late.
[8/
The result:
Humans can't intuitively experience the virus.
We're forced to grasp it through data.
That goes against millions of years of psychological evolution.
Our defense—science—is a series of ideas that we've only had for a handful of centuries.
[9/
As a result, the #coronavirus has been a test, not of our healthcare systems—they've fought with science as well as they could—but of our social psychological structures.
[10/
Societies that incorporated data quickly and were able to compel citizens to modify their behaviors accordingly won.
Those that couldn't react to data quickly, or couldn't win the psychological war by compelling their citizens to do what's right, lost.
[11/
The #coronavirus has yielded a psychological war against humans.
Some strongholds stood unabated.
In most of the world, it won.
[12/12]
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Apparently, its origin is unclear, and its usage polemic. So this is a thread about its origin, why, how it’s used, and a lesson about processes vs. goals.
Back in March, ppl had no idea what was happening. They took cases at face value. One of the big goals of the article “Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now” was to highlight how official cases was meaningless.
Then, ppl realized cases were not the entire picture. Testing was crucial too. No tests, no cases — but lots of hidden infections. So they started reporting cases and tests.
But these are meaningless numbers in a vacuum, so they sought a ratio.
We’ve been lucky though. In the 1918 pandemic, the 2nd wave was likely driven by a mutation that was both more infectious AND fatal.
We already knew this was happening back in March. This image is from The Hammer and the Dance. The only thing we didn’t know then is which variant was going to prevail. Details.
Capitalism vs socialism, markets vs gov... Most ppl think 1 is great and the other trash. That’s simplistic.
They’re tools adapted to different situations. We must understand them to know when to use them. Thread.
[1/
Capitalism is great. It uses natural selfishness to push ppl to be as productive as possible, promising them wealth. The + you produce for others, the + you get.
That is achieved by incurring both the cost and benefit of your initiatives.
Here’s the pbm
[2/
It creates a huge incentive to increase your benefits in ways that worsen society.
This happens in many ways. Eg:
1. Information asymmetry
You want cheap & delicious food. But what if it has ingredients that cause cancer? The producer knows it, but doesn’t tell you.
[3/
One of the key arguments of Herd Immunity apologists like @ScottWAtlas or Anders Tegnell is that you can't stop the virus. That means it only stops killing people when 50%-80% of the population has caught it (66% in Manaus). nature.com/articles/d4158…
If it had taken us 5 years to get a vaccine, it might have made sense: it might be too hard to control the virus this long. But now we can guess that by mid-late 2021, enough ppl might be vaccinated to stop it.