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I wanted to mmm just make a short
announcement for some some of the
listeners I just wanted to really say
thank you
mmm I had mentioned a few episodes in a
row that I had got some nasty emails and
I had a whole bunch of people email me
some praise and for dr. Hawk dr. Lisle
you and and the podcast itself so I just
wanted to reach out and say thank you to
those listeners I really appreciate it
made my made my week good always good to
hear that we're not offending everybody
in fact it reminded me of a lecture dr.
Lau that you gave one time where you
drew a bell curve and you said because
there was one question and one of the
audience said well why do I keep
offending people you know this wasn't my
question somebody asked you dr. Lisle
why do I keep offending people at lunch
nobody wants to talk politics with me
and you drew her bell curve he said well
any time you take one position it's just
like there's enough people there's gonna
be somebody on the complete opposite end
so be careful what you say at lunch very
much you know you're offending some of
the people all of the time just have to
strike the right balance but we're
always yes we're always just trying to
tell the truth that's all we're up to
yeah see if we live we'll just see how
many people we can offend today we'll
just find out that's right all right
let's get out a goal and maybe one day
they'll be like a little ticker you know
and to be like alright well then we'll
have a good truth - offense ratio okay
there you go
so yeah so today we're we're talking a
little bit more about coronavirus and
this pandemic going on and then also
some coronavirus related questions of
how people are dealing with this
pandemic and any stay at home orders etc
so but before we start dr. Lyle dr.
Hawke do you have any updates for us
about any new data that has come out
that you wanted to share with us or in
anything anything in that topic well I
certainly would but I want to get give
Jen the floor because as I wrap up I'd
be a while yeah
she ate that I don't think there's
anything like anything new that we would
want to share would be you know in
watching the numbers which I know that
you've been doing so I don't think I
have any brand new observations on the
social and of things I have sort of
ongoing observations but I nothing
nothing that is you know a burning topic
that needs to be addressed it again I I
put myself in the position of saying
well we want to get ourselves sort of
grounded in the new data first before we
move forward but then you know 45
minutes later we'll see I yield the
floor with some trepidation that will
we'll get where we're supposed to be
going eventually well good I've been
silent long enough it's better that's
right that's right
I know it's really difficult yeah I
think a great deal has come to light in
the last week and so the lot last week
has been an important week for our
understanding the and so a few things
happened that were important one one
thing that was important was our friend
aya need us at Stanford he and his his
crew went out to gather data in in
California in the Bay Area and by doing
testing on antibodies and as best they
can determine around three percent or so
the San Francisco Bay Area was infected
and which means they were infected and
never knew it and had some mild symptoms
and then passed on the they also then
turn around and ran that same another
group ran the same study in Southern
California and LA area came back I think
with somewhat higher numbers but more or
less you know triangulating on something
between three four five percent of
people were infected as of probably
April 1st so that from there that tells
you that California very likely has seen
through three or four percent
of its population infected of you know
40 something million people so you're
looking at just grossly maybe a million
five infections and you have about 1200
fatalities so it that that is looking
like point one in California at this at
this moment the and I Anita says okay
looks like the flu
a similar ballpark to the flu and so
that's that's a huge thing incidentally
an entertaining side-effect of this I
don't know you may remember the guys
name Jen the political science guy in at
Columbia how Hellman I God what is his
name its Andrew something Gelman maybe
yeah I believe it's an gentleman he's
he's a yeah he's been sort of a stats
adjacent Poli Sci guy for a long time
let me just I will I'll confirm while
you're describing him but I'm pretty
sure it's Andrew Gelman yeah apparently
he was all upset at this yeah well he
doesn't like good news right right so we
we wouldn't want to hear we wouldn't
want to hear any good news
just just when our big funding check was
gonna come we write what we really
needed it to be a big disaster if
anybody starts indicating it's not then
this is bad this is terrible and they're
yes and he called he called out the
Stamper group and said that they should
apologize to Stanford University this is
Terrell University to the Essex
community more manatee yeah yeah just
we're talking about one of the greatest
statistical sciences scientists in
medicine of all time here that he is
criticizing so he's way out of line like
a tip typical you know yeah obviously he
has politicized not just politics
politicized but personal competitive
agendas that you will not see and I need
us at all
so yeah listen to yeah he's really made
his career on I'm sort of you know
talking about political polarization and
you know why why rich people vote
differently than poor people and so he's
he's you know he's a political scientist
with a particular political agenda and I
think he's a well he's a fairly well
regarded statistician and he's in
Bayesian methods but he's no I not a fan
of good news when no Politis so this
this was extraordinarily important good
news and it it's certainly there's
certainly more to be learned about it
and when you look at when you look at
numbers like this essentially pointing
to a death rate of one in a thousand
when I look at the stats from New York
and in New York they already have
something like 20,000 fatalities and
they only have 20 million people so
they're already at one of the thousands
so it gives me pause that it could be as
good as a 1,000 it could be it could be
double that and very very possibly is
double that there's New York City I've
had a number of listeners that are bunch
of sharp people send me a lot of good
good stuff over the last week so
somebody sent me something about New
York being the best potentially
vulnerable city by by essentially how
old folks are the also a lot a lot of
folks sent me the IANA ayah neatest
research and other research and so it
looks there was an Oxford group that has
done you know it's basically ground huge
amounts of numbers and and everything in
their database was triangulating for
things to probably be south of 0.2 so
again to use the numbers the way Jen
would like us to use the numbers 0.0 0.2
percent would be that if you were
infected on average you have a ninety
nine point eight percent of survival if
it's a point one or one in a thousand
fatality you would have a 99.9 percent
chance of survival
so either way either of these numbers
whether were now the debate the Lu
debate now starts at point one point two
maybe 0.3 1.0 is out and the World
Health Organization discussion about
this being two percent three percent two
point seven percent one point seven
percent this is these are all as I anita
says these are astronomical mistakes
they're not even close and so what we're
dealing with is we're we're now dealing
with what what appears to be in the
United States it would look like we are
past the midpoint and we are on the
downslope so we have now had according
to the University of Washington model
were were probably three-quarters of the
way through the fatalities that we're
going to experience we probably had you
know at least two-thirds of them or if
not three-quarters of them so that's uh
still a lot of fatalities clearly a
nasty new virus on the scene once again
though when we look at who the victims
are this is this is important for all of
us to understand who the victims are so
that we understand really what the what
the true cost is of this disease so this
is not to minimize this is to be
accurate as to what the true costs are
the also I've had a number of people
talk to me this week that you know are
legitimately worried themselves because
they can't they can't make heads or
tails of of the all of the news and the
the numbers and you should understand
that according to the this evidence if
you're if you're reasonably healthy at
any age reasonably healthy you don't
have to be like a picture of health just
recently healthy your odds of a fatality
of this are extremely low this is
particularly true for for anybody's to
who's around 60 or younger the these
odds start to be on in the neighborhood
of less than your risk this year of
dying in an auto accident so if you're
under 50 if you're fiftyish or under it
is considerably less odds than you dying
in Ottawa
so hopefully that I mean and that's
that's just this year I mean your odds
of dying
Occidental if-- time are massively
higher than your then your odds of dying
of the corruptors so let's keep in
context as to what the risk factors are
they are lower than you driving okay so
let's keep that straight and it's not a
matter of whether or not you're unlucky
number comes up this is if you're
infected if you are infected with the
corona virus your odds of dying of the
corona virus are a lot less than you
dying in an auto accident this year okay
so that's something to do to keep in
mind so the another another way to look
at this and then then we'll table this
and go to other issues but a way to look
at this is to step back and look at the
total social well actually the total
biological cost of this virus and in
context to other biological costs that
we face so for example so the the the
virus doesn't even come close to the
cost of possible fatalities with driving
so that's that's not even so the total
amount of fatalities that that could
take place from this virus over the next
thirty years
you know are not going to come into the
ballpark with how many people would die
fatalities on the road the particularly
when we multiply it out by the amount of
number of years lost because the average
person who dies on the road might be 40
years old but the average person that
dies of this virus is in their 70s so
there's a huge difference in the amount
of life lost so if we were going to look
at the the cost of this whole thing and
right now if we were to take as an
estimate probably the worst case
scenario estimate right now is that it's
a 0.2% fatality in other words
ninety-nine point eight percent chance
of survival if you're infected the the
truth is is that that obscures
some very important distinctions and
that is that if you're over 70 it's
probably more like 1% and if you're you
know 50 or 40 it's going to be like 1 in
10,000 so the the people that are 65 and
over or overwhelmingly over-represented
here and the people as age climbs 75 is
way more problematic than 65 and 80 is
more problematic than 75 and 85 is much
more problematic than 80 in other words
this is a heavily age correlated disease
so that means that the amount of life
lost and remember that if you're 75
years old and you can track this virus
there's a 99% chance that you survive it
so who is the one percent that doesn't
survive that's not a random individual
folks remember that you know ten percent
or so people of that age are smoking an
awful lot of people of that age have
stents in their heart many of them have
multiple pathological conditions that
they are in trouble they're medicated
for a variety of ills diabetes is very
significant so when we look add up all
of the and incidentally the evidence
very clearly implicates these things as
major additive factors to the likelihood
of death so as a result we know that if
a person is a one out of a hundred who
dies of an infection of this virus in
their old age they are not a random
individual they are absolutely they're
not even close to a random individual
there they're clearly in the bottom 10
percentile not a hundred percent of the
time but they are very very
statistically likely to be in the bottom
10 percentile for life expectancy so the
way to think about this is if the
average age of the average death of the
coronavirus in the United States is
maybe 75 it's 80 in Italy so if it's
about 75 then and mostly male 60 40 the
average male just in
general at 75 years old may have a life
expectancy of you know seven years the
the person that is in the bottom 10
percentile of that life expectancy is
probably half of that so if we actually
look at the life expectancy of the
typical individual that draw dies from
the coronavirus it's probably no more
than five years five years is probably
very generous so if we were to look at
that and we were to say okay let's
suppose that the coronavirus has a cost
if you are an individual victim of sixty
months that's I think that's probably
very reasonable and we believe that your
odds of being such a victim or maybe 1%
so we're going to divide 60 months by a
hundred and we're going to find out the
per capita cost for these older
individuals and we're going to wind up
with less than a month so the the cost
and this is of our older individuals if
you divide it now by the entire
population it's going to be very small
so we're talking days now contrast this
for example and so as a public health
issue how many days of life are lost per
capita to the coronavirus we're gonna
find out that it's a handful of days as
we spread it out over the population the
this is assuming that everybody in the
population would ultimately contract the
virus and that there would never be that
there would never be heard immunity and
that there would never be any vaccine or
anything else under the Sun so this is
assuming that 350 million people all of
them sooner or later get the corona
virus and in their road age if they get
it that they a certain percentage wind
up succumbing so that's that's how we
would run that data now contrast that
with so we have essentially two and a
thousand people will die and of those
people we have an
birds cost of Navy Navy five years okay
so that's one an one in five hundred
times five years that's one way to think
about this now let's contrast this with
another public health cost and and we're
going to contrast this with cigarette
smoking so cigarette smoking is 14% of
the population and of those people that
will cost them about eight to ten years
so it's it's probably close to twice as
costly in terms of years and it's 70
times more prevalent
so therefore what we're talking about is
we're talking about a social cost that
is like a hundred and forty to one in
terms of the days lost so when we really
look at this now some people might say
yeah but it's got this capricious aspect
that you catch this thing and then you
die and it just doesn't seem fair
because it was pushed upon you by the
environment and I can understand that
and I mean that has us all rattled and
it has ass all feeling like you know
we're sort of spinning the wheel of
fortune and we don't want to be on the
wrong side of it and it feels you know
we all feel threatened and I understand
that but the truth of the matter is is
that number one the overall costs are
low and and etc and also it's also the
case that a substantial amount of the
costs of coronavirus are self-inflicted
in the same way that the cigarette
smoking is so of course we also
understand that people don't sort of
know what they're doing and they they
don't know about diet and lifestyle etc
but they certainly know about cigarette
smoking they also don't know how to
manage their their diet and lifestyle
issues generally very well but so there
are costs there that are being imposed
on people really out of ignorance but
when we look at the
total costs here I think we should keep
these in mind particularly I mean I
don't know that anybody is but when we
really look at the total societal costs
and biological costs individuals the the
problem of and I'm no big anti-smoking
person it's like if you want to smoke go
ahead but literally the cost of
secondhand smoke to secondary
individuals and environments is
considerably greater than than the sum
total costs are the coronavirus so the
this is the the context that I think is
useful for people to keep in mind when
you're staring out there now listening
to the news bombard you with the
horrendous fear and essentially the the
neverending bad news and you look at the
very substantial economic carnage this
is resulting from this back up and
realize that this whole thing is 1/100
of the the biological tragedy and costs
associated with cigarette smoking in
this country ok so now we start thinking
of hmm is there anything that we could
do as a society that might reduce
cigarette smoking by 1 percent because
if it was it would counterbalance the
effect of the coronavirus so that's uh
that's my rant for the day and it's a
very interesting implications of that of
that thought experiment dr. Lyle yeah oh
well nobody cares yeah yeah I mean it's
it's a it's a very like rational
approach very very mathematically
grounded like of course it makes all
kinds of intellectual sense when you
look at it this way but this is not what
people's lived experiences because
people are you know they're they're not
irrational in the sense that their minds
are coming up with ideas and assessments
and inferences and cost-benefit analyses
that are coming out of nowhere though
all of those inferences and cost-benefit
analyses are coming from distorted
information ie outliers being over
in the media you know at the friend of
the friend who went into the hospital
feeling a little sick and and didn't
make it and people's personality
distortion people just being more sort
of a little more emotionally volatile a
little a little more conscientious also
the immersive existential experience of
going out into the world and everybody's
now required at least in Sonoma County
and lots of places around the country
now it's mandatory that you wear a mask
in public and so this is like a really
this is a an unprecedented sort of
existential thing that is that is
getting into people's it's it's tapping
into whatever sort of baseline
irrationality they have combined with
the bad information that they're getting
from a very distorted information media
environment social media if CNN wherever
it's coming from it's it's over
representing outliers and it's designed
to scare you so it keeps your eyeballs
glued on the page it's just absolutely
how it works and so it's people people
need I know it feels like you're doing
the wrong thing to turn away from the
information to turn off the TV to shut
down the social media feed because you
have this we've talked about this before
where it's information is so salient and
important in the Stone Age if you've got
a little bit of an advantage you know
how something works a little better than
the other guy this not only speaks
volumes to your survival and
reproduction capacity but your entire
village and you may be greatly
celebrated for for bringing this new
information back home so we have this
like inability to detach from the influx
of information much of which is bad
distorted skewed biased and it is having
a very direct effect on how we are going
going about our lives in the midst of
this and we don't we don't have a lot of
so-called rational control over that
process so it feels like you are doing
the wrong thing by detaching by turning
off the news but you that is the only
part of your environment that you can
control there's no there's no piece of
information that you're getting from
watching over representation of outliers
that's going to contribute to your
ability to survive this thing in in any
sort of measurable way there's there's
nothing that you need
no at this point it's gonna change your
behavior and and give you better
survival odds against this terrible
menace and so the only thing that's
happening by being tuned into constant
bombardment of news is that you're
making yourself crazy you're making
yourself crazy and you're sort of
contributing to ongoing distorted
inferences about it so it's it's really
important for people if they find
themselves really bothered by this and
really stressed out to just turn a turn
off the news just turn away just stop
stop talking about it constantly stop
freaking out about it with with the
additional pieces of information that
you're getting I realized there's some
irony in saying this on a podcast about
anybody who's listening I'm effectively
telling you to tune out right now but it
really is like you you can't recognize
the words you guys are actually giving
us the accurate information right
it's like pleasure trap sometimes you
can't tell yeah we're talking about this
the other day duck Rock is this is like
an intellectual pleasure trap yes you
know the right thing feels wrong and the
wrong thing feels right yeah it sounds
familiar dr. Lao from your planet
wrapped up yeah yeah and there's so many
people especially highly conscientious
people which are very well represented
in our listener population who really
struggle with like oh I can't possibly
not be up on the latest I've got to have
the latest numbers of God and know that
all the latest information and so they
they just put themselves in this
position where they're they can't they
can't normally calibrate they're there
permanently being distorted by an
information environment over which they
have zero control and it's really it's
it's causing a lot of distress to a lot
of people so it sounds to me and maybe
dr. Lisle dr. Hawk you can you can you
know tell me if I'm incorrectly
assessing this but but the people who
are really reacting this way are just in
general very opportunistic and they're
they're they're fierce competitors when
it comes to normal life and so this is
an opportunity to really really kind of
showcase the personality traits that
make
there's a lot of that you know extreme
you know the the sort of some of the
loudest voices are the most disagreeable
conscientious people I know so you get
you get somebody who's very disagreeable
and very conscientious and they are you
know really like a big a big voice for
this issue and they really want to make
the case and talk about it all the time
and highlight how destructive it is and
how how problematic it is and how we're
all doomed doomed it's terrible we're
doomed so here you're running running
into that a lot but I think also just
people are sort of mostly conscientious
and maybe a little you know they're not
super stable that doesn't mean they're
unstable they might just be average
emotional stability average emotional
stability is going to be rocked by this
situation you're going you can't go to
the post office without putting a mask
on your face and watching everybody else
and you know everybody's behind behind
plastic and this is it you would you
would have to be an extremely stable
character to not be bothered by that so
there's nothing about your personality
that says that you're wildly unstable if
you're disturbed by the changing value
proposition of a world that you've never
seen before that's absolutely
appropriate that you would you would
have some reaction to that and so most
people are having a reaction to that so
it becomes necessary when you're when
you're looking at that kind of situation
and it's causing you a lot of emotional
distress it's like well what can I do
about it what you can do about it is you
can control your environment because you
can't change who you are and you can't
change the the fact that all of these
purveyors of information or extremely
incentivize to scare the crap out of you
and and then the information
entrepreneurs like you're describing
Nathan who are disagreeable
conscientious who are even more
incentivized by virtue of their sort of
disagreeable pushy personality so it's
all the only leverage that you have over
your life experience right now is to
control your immediate environment and
turn off your TV yeah unless it's I need
us then you listen Yeah right
yeah yeah yeah glad Nathan oh speaking
of which is one comment that I got from
a listener recently was was the
following mmm
dear doctors people on social media are
using your analysis of the kovat 19 data
to justify defiance of mitigation
measures holding protests reopening the
economy what say you
you know I yeah well first of all um
it's ludicrous cuz nobody's listening to
me and then going in protesting we have
a tiny little group of an intellectual
elite group of people that isn't doing
anything of the kind
okay so that that's that that person's
just setting up a straw argument to try
to try to ding us a little bit the no
the truth is is that all we're trying to
do is speak to people's IQ and to get
them to to try to help them actually
analyze the real CV that's out there in
the world which is important and I think
we emphasize that you know a month ago
the the it was very uncertain what we
were looking at it was pretty uncertain
you know certain enough to me even a
week ago even though the curves looked
awfully good they looked in other words
it looked an awful lot more like a 1/10
of a percent than it looked like a
percent and so the catastrophic version
was starting to to fail as a model with
respect to they collected evidence and
so now that is now more firmly
established despite the the nut from
Colombia throwing a fit the but the
truth of the matter is good good you
know I mean so right but the but the
thing is is that where this started was
the following for prefer perfectly
reasonably and that is early in the game
you don't know what it is it just looks
scary and bad and it's a very nasty
illness and it kills people and it kills
them brutally so right away you've got
everybody super worried and so the first
thing you have to do is you have to say
whoa if this is a 1% this is a this
catastrophe and so then so what do you
do so now you you go overboard and you
do what it is that that we've done in
other countries have done and in the
meantime you know that even if it's a
tenth is bad or 2/10 as bad as you're
deeply fearing it's going to be bad
enough to overwhelm systems health
systems in certain places where there's
going to be a resource management crisis
and people are going to die that didn't
need to die because we didn't have
enough ventilators or beds or doctors or
whatever the thing was and so it makes
sense in that regard to actually work in
that the flat and the curve Theory
flatten the curve theory with respect to
stopping a virus in its tracks may or
may not be long term particularly useful
it might if you get a vaccine at some
point but it certainly makes a lot of
sense with respect to resource
management crisis but now I think we can
see now in later April the resource
management crises
I don't believe exists in the United
States in other words I think the
actions of the last several weeks have
actually hit that thing head-on and very
intelligently I don't know how
intelligently an awful lot of brains
have been working on that problem and
there's been I'm sure you know huge
overkill in all kinds of places more
ventilators Ford Motor Company you're
gonna make a hundred thousand more than
we need you know all this sort of thing
but that's fine it's like we didn't know
what we were up against so why not you
know why not go for broke and make sure
that we can do everything or to not get
what's that what's that so we're the
king of ventilators now yeah so now
we're gonna King a pen laters that's
fine okay so on that's just an expense
of facing a crisis and not having the
parameters figured out and so such as
life and now we can all be deeply
relieved that this thing is
intermediate-level problem and that's
what it is and you know with an
intermediate level costs is all that's
necessary now we're going to get all
kinds of
it becomes a political resource
management football that we're gonna
watch now for the next few months all
about that but but so I was not down on
at all and trying to minimize what was
reasonable to do but now we have a
different issue so now now the public
does not understand what we're talking
about here public doesn't understand
that this is 1% of the public health
threat of cigarette smoking they don't
know this they don't know anything close
to this they don't understand that the
the risk here is less than their odds of
dying in a car crash which is not
something they think about other than
doing what then put it on their seatbelt
then hopefully driving a safe car and
not driving drunk so in other words be
reasonable will be smart be prudent and
then the right thing to do is understand
that the the problems are overwhelmingly
concentrated in the elderly and the ill
elderly so the it makes sense as a
society to think through and have expert
advice as to how it is that we can we
can close off will reduce the exposure
of those people to this threat but not
everybody else we know that 3 or 4
percent of the state of California has
been exposed in the last 30 days we've
got a million and a half people that
don't even know they even had it ok so
if that's what the situation is and that
when the virus gets to an elderly sick
person
it creates an early and unfortunate
death then obviously the thing to do is
to protect them and otherwise you know
not worry about it any more than you
worry about any other you know in any
reasonable amount of worry so that's
we're not looking to have people
protests we're looking for intelligent
discussion about this incidentally I you
know I'm actually not obsessiveness I
think it's I think it's a fascinating
and serious problem and obviously it
warranted you know very high level you
know attention here the last month the
I read something in a major in a major
outlet I can't remember what it was
Atlantic or New York New York Times or I
can't remember what it was but it was
the the the author was complaining about
anybody that says that that this is that
this is that these people would have
died anyway and they said well listen
you can look at the data and it shows
that this month you know there's the
30,000 more deaths than they were that
this you know this time last year so
therefore these are additive and if you
look in Sweden it's 6,000 more whatever
it is and they said so you see these are
extra deaths these are not these are
these people would not have died anyway
well that is moronic analysis and I wish
I could take the 130 IQ human being that
went to Swarthmore and then wrote that
article for that outlet and take them
out to the woodshed and I don't know
they need to be slapped around they need
to use their brain because nobody said
that they were gonna die today or this
month what we said is that they are the
those individuals are in trouble and
that their length of life is not the
same thing as an average member of the
population so the thing to do to
actually analyze the net effect to the
coronavirus it's going to be to watch
the death rates over the next two or
three years that's what we're going to
be looking at okay so when the death
rates go up this year by 60 or 70 or 80
thousand people the question is do they
go down next year by 20,000 that's what
you need to be looking at okay once the
virus has passed which is it probably
will pass and go quiet for the remainder
of the year it may or may not but let's
suppose that it does then what we're
going to be looking at is we're going to
be looking at October November December
January we're going to be seeing whether
or not it's 3,000 a month less in the
upcoming months because this of the
70,000 people that we lose here this
spring
but we I will believe that some of those
people wouldn't have made it over this
next couple years in fact it's probably
a good percentage so of course the data
doesn't indicate it now because it can't
so hopefully anybody that was so don't
be intimidated by that argument because
that's a that's a fallacious and and you
know abhorrent statistical analysis you
of course are looking at that these
individuals of course we are saying yes
they there are people that are in
trouble and their lives are are expected
to be relatively short of course the
virus is taking some of the last of
their precious life but they are they
are individuals that we can look at this
total cost in this way that I'm
describing not by looking at the score
this month look at the score this month
is no way to analyze the total cost oh
that's wonderful
dr. Lauer whenever you like explain
these types of things and you know I can
hear your voice in the background we
were like all right let's back up the
camera and take over take a wide-angle
look at this No
yeah and I think I mean it's gonna be
actually quite obvious so we will but we
won't know that story very well you know
for the next year or two but you know
two years from now we'll be able to look
back much more accurately and look at
the cost and you know it's going to be
something like we're describing yeah but
when you're when you're in the middle of
a resource management surge like we are
it doesn't there's no intuition and most
people that it that it's a it's a bell
curve and that it will ever diminish in
its sort of pain right you just sort of
imagine what you're looking at now is
what you are going to project
indefinitely into the future and that's
a very alarming thing to think about and
so then you do start thinking oh well it
is people are dying who wouldn't have
otherwise died and and right if it's
your grandma it's like oh well you have
this kind of bias that yeah I could have
had another another 10 20 years with her
but that that's just statistically not
the case it may be the case for your
specific grandma of course
there's variation in the data and there
are lots of outliers that but overall
with the whole data pattern you you are
looking at people who are you know in in
the last six months to two years of
their life and so yes they're there
being there they're being punished
earlier by something and at a faster
rate that is overwhelming certain
systems in certain places but it's not
it this this is something that does
rebalance itself over time so the long
term data will tell the tale which will
be which will be something to watch this
is actually something that's come up
with the there have been a lot of memes
going around about the mass graves and
so a lot of people are saying oh well
this is particularly in New York this is
you know we've never had mass graves
before and this is proof that this is
this you know unbelievable terrible
thing and it's never gonna end well mass
graves have always have always existed
for unidentified unclaimed bodies and
they're usually these these people are
buried with the idea that it's temporary
and that hopefully they will be claimed
and re-entered somewhere else and so
there's been more demand on those mass
mass grave centers than normal because
there is more resource use and and
overwhelm in New York in particular but
the concept didn't this it we haven't
built trenches for mass graves as a
society in a way that we never have
before so this is the little nuances of
information in the environment that
really get to people and tap into like
their greatest fears and they're the
greatest unknowns and all of the kind of
disgust mechanisms and in-group
out-group mechanisms that accompany
something like a invisible scary virus
and lead people into inferences that are
really self-destructive and contributing
to great unhappiness yeah that's it's
enough to make someone traumatized just
kidding no they're going to know that
Rolo not going to never interrupt you
know I just go right ahead yeah what's
up well it's it's one of the questions
from a listeners about about these I'm
so traumatized memes go flow
around on social media because of this
lockdown so if you want a cloud you want
to make what you want to say what you
wanted to say and then we can do that
question oh no the the the I don't know
this is this is something that that I
guess I I don't have good intuition
about this just because I don't
as someone who's actually quite
emotionally stable you know probably
90th percentile on a typical Big Five
test I just don't have a lot of of
bandwidth to to listen to this kind of
disturbance the the truth is is that
when I look back in him in history and I
look at the tremendous struggles and
challenges that human beings have had to
go through this is like a joke sitting
inside your air conditioned and heated
home the with with the teeth with the
color television on with your iPad iPod
I with this insta base what you know
Skype what whoever it is that you what
okay that whether a full refrigerator I
mean I guess yeah I guess I understand
that there's some discomfort but really
compared to the Romans attacking your
town the I mean even quite frankly to
like a major fire that is bearing down
on your real estate and and your your
life I took actually this just seems to
me to be hmm I don't know maybe if I was
in the middle of New York in the middle
of this thing my anxiety certainly would
have been higher not knowing you know
what the parameters
were likely to be but now the parameters
are now better understood and I think
the rest of us are not living in places
where suddenly you know we have evidence
or indication or fear that humans around
us are going to be dying like flies I
live in a state of over 40 million
people okay 40 million people and twelve
hundred people have died in another five
or six hundred or so are expected to die
I mean these are exceedingly small
numbers so a thousand you know a
thousand out of a million that's one in
a thousand a thousand out of 40 million
that's one in forty thousand so my odds
of dying this year in an auto accident
folks are one in five thousand that's
what they are and their their cumulative
over your lifetime it's one in five
thousand every year
keep going you keep going you keep going
it's actually it's about one in sixty
lifetime one in sixty coronavirus is
gonna come this year and then it's going
to mitigate and right now if you're a
Californian you're staring down the
barrel of maybe a one in thirty thousand
chance you're staring down the barrel of
a one in five thousand chance of an auto
accident and it keeps coming back every
year for the rest of your life to move
into one in sixty so we're talking about
a one in sixty against a one in thirty
thousand so yeah I don't consider this
to be you know something that that you
know as a month ago we didn't know what
we had now we do and as jen has been
pointing out we're being pushed to keep
the anxiety rolling for a variety of her
one of her favorite phrases which is
perverse incentives and so there's
perverse incentives that are that are
keeping essentially reassuring math from
reaching us but it's going to leak out
it's going to be you know essentially
saturating slowly human consciousness
over the next weeks no problem
yeah I'm perfectly patient it's going to
get there and pretty soon the world's
going to figure out that the world
in and we're all going to have a pretty
clear vision of this by Jim the but me
in terms of my my reaction to people's
psychological upset about what it is
that they're facing it's one thing if
you're talking about finances I remember
had a friend in grad school who's uh who
said we were actually playing we were
out playing golf and we're both we're
both psychologists and he says oh man he
says I'm listening to this person
complain about their issues and he goes
and I'm thinking to myself that's
nothing compared to what I got going
buddy I got student loans I never forgot
bad just cracked me up if you got to
financial anxiety about this that makes
a lot of sense to me the you know your
your lives can be derailed disrupted you
know change I mean majorly
inconvenienced and it can be really be
you know a lot of a lot of situations
can change for the worse as a result of
this but the the the what else the
social needs or something like this or
the the fact that you're bored or
somehow that this is super stressful I
don't know I don't get it
maybe maybe Jen can weigh in on this
because my patience for that kind of
complaint is very low well the question
actually yeah the the the listener
actually is saying it's so true what dr.
Lao dr. Hawker said that it isn't stable
people doing the whining it's people who
have a low freaked out threshold and so
this person says that they're very
bummed about know happy hours plays
movies etc no you know no no crowding
into state parks and whatnot but it
isn't traumatic so yeah the the question
is is are there any suggestions for
talking to these freaked out friends
should we just let them freak out you
know it seems like such a like from my
perspective I mean I look at you know
how this thing is playing out it just it
just seems so strange
how people are freaking out about this
well actually the the I guess Jen what
would you say just what they need
anything they just need better
information they need better information
but some percentage of the population is
beyond information you know some some
percentage of the population is just
kind of yeah less emotionally stable
going to use a situation like this
opportunistically to dodge out of
competition you know we've talked about
this a lot where it becomes kind of a I
if you've got lower conscientiousness
emotional instability various other
personality factors may come into play
here you're going to see an opportunity
in in a situation like this which allows
you to exaggerate the amount that you
are suffering as a result of it and
therefore present to the stone-age
village that you are it is not
reasonable to expect you to be able to
live up to their standards so so that
that is something that is going to be
always present in certain personalities
who are kind of always looking for
loopholes and ways to avoid competitive
pressures and when they get this sort of
context of a big so-called disaster a
big big crisis it becomes very very
expedient to to leverage it in in
self-interest and so a lot of that is
going on so there there's this is
another kind of perverse incentive where
you're gonna exaggerate the degree to
which something like this is directly
affecting your life so there's lots of
that going on there's also I think you
know people it's it's a the amount that
people are suffering is is relative to
the degree of comfort that they've been
living in so I very much appreciate what
Doug is saying about you know it's
nothing - this is not the siege of
leningrad you know this is definitely
not not the kind of situation that
humans have collectively endured in the
past but most people who are going
through this moment have been have lived
lives of tremendous comfort you know
there's there's really not anything in
you know the the history of most people
raishin X and younger apart from you
know a little bit of existential
disruption around 9/11 and the in the
end of the Vietnam War but it's really
that like this has been this has been a
very comfortable very abundant set of
decades for most people alive today and
so you know people have become
accustomed to a very high standard of
living very high degree of safety very
high degree of comfort cheap abundant
available goods and food and housing and
everything else and and so even people
who are facing financial disruption
which is you know a lot of people are
facing some kind of financial disruption
they're not really understanding that
even that is the disruption is sort of
correlating with their expected level of
comfort and so you know they may have
enough money to live at the standard of
living that their grandparents did but
not at the standard of living that
they're accustomed to and that is
comfortable and that is you know what
they what they feel entitled to and
deserving of so that there's all kinds
of all kinds of swirling stuff going on
here where people are using a crisis it
misinterpreting a crisis having the
cognitive distortion of projecting it
forever out in time without any end
immersing themselves too much in bad
information sources for media social
media participating in a lot of
groupthink with similarly freaked out
people I think if you are a if you're a
stable well-informed high IQ person like
all of the people who listen to this
fine podcast surely are then I I don't
think it's your job to talk people who
are freaked out off the ledge I think
you should regard this very similarly to
you what like like when we talk about
the pleasure trap you know one of the
most common questions we get with with
healthy living and pleasure trap
questions though how can I convince
everyone in my life to to eat a whole
food plant-based diet like I've suddenly
learned about and it's changed my life
and it's so great and it's like no you
you really shouldn't be in the business
of trying to convince anyone of anything
for several reasons but the main reason
is that
you lording some some better position
over somebody is a immediate threat to
their status and if people are acting
out and freaked out and you know
claiming on on Facebook how traumatized
they are and that they can't be possibly
expected to to go back to work as a
result of their trauma they are that is
a status deficient person who is is
screaming out to the village for for a
little bit of recognition of their
status deficiency and so if you come
along and you try to talk them out of
that all you're doing is you're
threatening a scared animal and so some
some people are gonna be you know they
they might be in a situation where they
really don't know they really have not
encountered the information before and
if they did encounter the information
they they would suddenly feel much
better about the situation and be able
to go forth in their life but a lot of
people are not a lot of people willfully
have ignored the reality of the
situation or you could you could present
them with that data and they would find
ways to deny it because they're so there
they're just so connected and it's so
important to them to leverage the
situation in their own interests so yeah
you look out for yourself you know take
care of your own informational
environment be a resource for people who
who would benefit from that resource but
don't don't get into the business of
trying to persuade anybody convince
anybody soothes anybody this is people
are just exaggerating and amplifying
their baseline personalities in a
situation like this Wow absolutely
wonderful yeah all right well part six
of we wanted to talk a little bit more
about other things but but coronavirus
tends to have dominated the conversation
to which I'm totally fine with but I I
had a little point on that it's a there
was a you know when I was on tweeter the
other day somebody somebody actually
went and ran did some sort of keyword
analysis on the discussion around
coronavirus on twitter in the last two
months
and that is also a bell-curve so so
discussion of it has started to fall off
somewhat people are some you know slowly
getting less and less interested but
they're not uninterested it's still
obviously the the most common trending
topic in basically any venue so I think
it's as long as it remains predominantly
relevant in the lives of people
listening and we're gonna continue
talking about it to some degree but it
is eventually though there's a light at
the end of the tunnel
oh no problem me I like talking all
numbers I like it that you guys just
stick to the truth and nothing but the
truth so help you I don't know the
Flying Spaghetti Monster yeah I think
that where I sit today with this is it
looks like the models and looks like the
evidence tells us that we're on the
downslope and so I'm I'm feeling the
relief that that that appears to be the
case and I expect that a week from now
it would be clearly the case and I'll
feel one notch more over comfortable and
one notch less interested in talking
about coronavirus and so that's where I
see us going and so just to let people
know we're we're not gonna spin on this
indefinitely and I and I have a feeling
that we are actually right now this week
at a very significant turning point in
our degree of certainty so I believe
that that a week from now we're going to
feel a whole notch for than we do to be
start exploring other things I do think
no I think you're you're right about
that but I I think that that misses the
ways in which this will continue to be
the most important topic of discussion
at a sort of sociological and political
level for the next sub months as as this
whole like I was just talking about a
second ago it continues to be used and
interpreted and weaponized by different
interest groups that are that are trying
to use it as part of a pre-existing
agenda and that that is only and you
know you're beginning to see the
of that with the protest michigan with
the election in wisconsin yeah we're
going into the rest of this election
season and there's a lot of a lot of
landmines built into this and very
different interpretations of reality
that are competing for attention and
space and so for me it's just sort of as
a you know social scientist it remains
incredibly interesting sort of
intellectually but also definitely
really relevant to to daily life because
it's not going away anytime soon even
though the numbers are we we can
reassure ourselves that you know we know
what this looks like we know the
rationality of it but it's going to
continue to really directly affect our
lives is that those numbers continue to
be misinterpreted and deployed in
suboptimal ways yeah it's as dr. Lao the
the more the less that we know one notch
less interested in talking about this
and then as as the election gets near
dr. Hawk I suspect you're going to have
one more notch more interested yeah
that's true we may be in an equilibrium
around that where it Doug's like
whatever the stats are in I'm done here
and I'm like hold on now starting to get
interesting now India well what is it
what's the famous that's how people use
those numbers yeah statistics oh yeah
lies lies lies and more lies and
propaganda and so that like it's it's
yes in never more so than in our current
dystopian information environment where
people live in whirlpools of
confirmation bias and so yeah we're get
we're heading into fairly pitched
information battles with very high
stakes so yeah very interesting night
well for our listeners if you haven't
read the pleasure trap already there's a
section in there called managing the
misinformed and managing the irritated
when it comes to socializing with people
who have completely different ideas of
you and they're trying to push it and so
dr. Lila I can see how this can
correlate to you know in the future when
people are you know staring you down for
not wearing the right type of mask in a
store you know what I mean at midnight
or something that that that might be a
useful chapter for people
to read
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