A 🧵on #COVID19 Survivorship Bias
on #SocialMedia

Working as a counsellor and drawing on personal experience as someone who’s immunocompromised, I’m ever conscious of the growing gulf between private and public experiences in this pandemic. Survivorship Bias refers our mental short cut that focuses us on stories of success, not failure. This distorts our world view and also impacts our capacity to assess risk in a pandemic where public health has been dumped in favour of ‘personal responsibility’. #COVID19

1. 2 psychological theories, Kahneman’s ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ and Solomon et al’s ‘Terror Management Theory’ on why humans are vulnerable to thinking errors and how these combined with mortal terror, impede a rational response to global threats such as the #Covid19 pandemic. 2.Kahneman in ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ (2011) described two systems of human thought guiding behaviour- System 1: An unconscious, automatic, fast thinking system based on the limbic system and System 2: A slower, rational thinking response led by the neocortex #COVID19 /25

Why pretending #COVID19 is over is dangerous and that COVID is not exceptional is a lie.

#CovidIsntOver COVID-19 is currently the 3rd leading cause of death in adults.

Understanding the experiences of those of us still wearing face masks in the West. 1/17 John A Powell writes: “When societies experience big and rapid change, a frequent response is for people to narrowly define who qualifies as a full member of society – a process I call “Othering”. 2/17

Our real test of strength?

Wearing masks in the West has always been physically easy for most people but psychologically much harder.
#COVID19 #CovidIsNotOver #MaskUp #COVID19Aus
1/16 Like wearing clothes, seat belts, bicycle helmets etc mask wearing can initially be a bit uncomfortable and inconvenient, requiring extra costs and efforts.

As a practice over time, with public health education and government support, mask wearing becomes habitual.
2/16