
The Coronavirus Is Much Worse Than You Think - djsumdog
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/202002/the-coronavirus-is-much-worse-you-think
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aawalton
Article implies that the average person had a 2% chance of drowning in a given
year. If that was true, 64% of people would down by the agree of 50. Basic
math doesn't add up. A 2% annual risk of death is catastrophic compared to
normal life risks:

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Barrin92
>A 2% annual risk of death is catastrophic compared to normal life risks:

as the article also points out, life is not lived in the aggregate. If you're
in good health and not very old you should adjust your perception of risk
according to your personal circumstances.

For reference, the chance of a 40+ year old woman to get breast cancer every
year is about 2%. I don't see all of them in perpetual state of panic. Someone
on twitter tried to figure out by how much the corona virus worsens the
average 'baseline' risk to die in any given year and I think it was about 5%.
Puts things into context.

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chmaynard
I'm suspicious when a scientist writes a blog post and doesn't cite any
references. Yes, there are elements of social panic in our response and it's
fine to point that out. But he goes much further and implies that this virus
is not a serious threat to human health, which is plainly false[0].

[0] [https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-
ans...](https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers-
covid-19/)

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duxup
I'm not convinced the numbers given here are sure to pan out long term. I've
seen what seem like far more authoritative sources indicate that things are
more unknown than this article.

