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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32849 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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I don't think I've seen the claim that having covid now will greatly increase your chance of dying over the next decade expressed anywhere.

It's the natural implication of a 1% fatality rate combined with multiple yearly reinfections. Why isn't this expressed anywhere? Because it would require someone to both 1) be off by a factor of 100 when estimating Covid IFR and 2) be capable of doing math and thinking through the consequences of their estimate. The intersection of these groups is small.

Nevertheless, if you poll people (liberals and conservatives) they will generally vastly overestimate the fatality rate of Covid. This is mostly due to not having a firm grasp of numbers or how they work.

Remember when Brian Williams said on air that Bloomberg could have given every American $1 million? This is the level of innumeracy we are dealing with here. It's not so much that people are politically motivated. It's just that they are very bad at math.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9_i0QrK2814

It's the natural implication of a 1% fatality rate combined with multiple yearly reinfections.

I was saying, "suppose getting covid once now increases your chance of death in 10 years by 25%." Not repeated infections. Do you think that isn't a good comparison?

edit: I think you're saying "if you believe that COVID has 1% fatality rate and you get re-infected every 6 months, then a 20% chance or so of dying from it in a decade is implied." That's probably not how COVID works (natural immunity lasts more than 6 months, covid will probably be a yearly cycle like the flu, and your outcomes should be correlated). Also, I suspect, as you point out, that most people are just bad at math.

It's not so much that people are politically motivated. It's just that they are very bad at math.

I agree with this--see my other reply to cafe above.

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