Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there are a number of factors at play. One, we've greatly reduced the risk of COVID through vaccines. This is the primary thrust of the article; if you've vaccinated, you're very unlikely to have serious consequences. Two, we're fatigued. You just can't be constantly vigilant for two or three years without something breaking. This compounds point one. We don't, as the article mentions, know what kind of relat…
> Third, a large portion of the population is in denial about their own levels of risk. If there was a 1% chance of dying every time you drove a car, or even a 1% chance of dying every time you got into a car accident, there would be panic in the streets, no pun intended. But a lot of people round a 1% chance of dying from COVID down to zero. I don't think you and I differ much in our broad conclusions on covid, but…
An obvious example of this is that the CDC numbers on COVID deaths by age. It's blatantly obvious, yet people on here wave their hand and say "1%" as if most HN readers are remotely close to 1% death rate, when it's a community composed of software engineers, a profession that skews young as a whole.
Here's the stats. Bear in mind that the distribution of CASES skews young.
https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/9bhg-hcku?mobile_redirect=true
Roughly 20,000 people between 18 and 40 died of covid.
About 35,000 between 40 and 50.
426k of the deaths were age 75 and up. 188k were people between 65 - 74.