Enjoying the view from Limbo
The other day, I unearthed dozens of cases of overt fraud and deliberate misinformation designed to stoke unjustified fear and mass panic for the purpose of tyrannical manipulation — that is to say, I scrolled through the headlines on my Microsoft News homepage. As usual of late, most of the major stories were about COVID-19, and almost all of these were presented with...
One of the most disturbing social symptoms of America’s coronavirus epidemic is a malady we may call mathematical hysteria: the inability, and even unwillingness, of millions of ordinarily rational adults to look at the numbers dancing before their panic-stricken minds with any sort of context-related sobriety. And perhaps the ugliest manifestation of this mathematical hysteria is the moral argument that this outbreak warrants...
I see that the head of the World Health Organization is quoted as saying of the current coronavirus outbreak, “This is not a drill.” Very helpful, I’m sure. Apparently, a lot of people out there thought this was a drill. That wisdom to one side, I shall carry on with my concluding unscientific postscript on the current Pandemic That Ate a Planet: A...
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