|
Re: Coronavirus
Governments do have a tough balancing act when it comes to their messaging as the general public are terrible and understanding risk and tend to be quite parochial, only seeing what is around them.
In real terms, the chance of any one individual dying of COVID are pretty small. However, the population is big so even with a small fatality rate, the numbers get big very quickly with the effects that come with that. If people think that the risk is small, they haven’t heard of anyone dying around them, they will start to say ‘I will take my chances’ and that’s where trouble lies. Or put it another way, with an infection fatality rate of 1% things don’t sound too bad until you extrapolate to the entire population of the UK and you have 650,000 deaths if everyone caught it.
Of course, each person does their own risk assessment. You see it on this forum with different levels of concern. For a country wide communication, you need to really hit out at the least risk averse and it seems like an increasingly powerful message is needed.
Of course, the consequence of this is scaring the bejeesus out of people who were already concerned. This will have a knock on effect down the line when things ease up and we want to kick start the economy. We did this last time, effectively bribing people to come out and be economically active with the Eat Out to Help Out scheme (of course, this may of restarted the transmission in the UK but that’s a different thing)
Finding the right balance to get the least risk averse to toe the line while not scaring the more meek is a tough one!
---------- Post added at 13:05 ---------- Previous post was at 12:55 ----------
One follow up thought, a lot of people are not happy with the governments interfering in their life and lifestyle - no one tells me what to do, it’s not the Goverments job to restrict liberty, etc. The upshot of behaviours leading from this, breaking lockdowns, taking risks and all that will increase the chances of goverment interference when you end up in hospital. We take the NHS for granted as that ‘always there’ safety net
|