“It’s just the flu”

“It only kills 2% of people”

“The flu, cancer, car accidents, malnutrition, etc have killed far more people”

“People were worried about SARS, Swine Flu, and H1N1, and they turned out to be hardly kill anyone.”

“There number of cases here is small. Why are you panicking over nothing?”

“People need to stop panicking. People are going hysterical. The media is trying to make people panic. Just look at them hoarding toilet paper”.

“People are trying to ruin the economy over nothing”

“The experts — epidemiologists — say there’s nothing to worry about” (I’ve had this said to me and I was given a link to a news article that spun statements from some epidemiologists to make it sound that way. They were saying that they didn’t know how the situation would pan out, and this was presented as if it meant they didn’t think there was any issue).

I imagine that most people aren’t aware of the graphs. I imagine most people would be dismissive of them for reasons like the following:

They simply believe the apparent normalcy in front of them more than some abstract maths. They don’t grasp the notion of exponential growth, so it seems fanciful. They also don’t understand how it’s possible to project into the future like that. Maybe they think it’s just fear-mongering speculation. What concrete evidence do they actually have for the situation in Italy? And why should they believe what’s going on in a different country will apply to their country. Maybe their country has a good health care system, and they assume that Italy doesn't.

And even if they are, they aren't aware of log scale.

I've worked with, presented, and consumed a lot of scientific data over my career and I still have a tendency to assume plots are linear no matter how many times I tell myself to always check scale first.

The relevant axis on this chart is the time axis, the x axis. The chart is linear in it. You see a bunch of nearly identical trend lines, and you have to just count how many days a given country is behind Italy. It doesn't matter what scale the vertical axis is in.

I have to wonder how many non-specialists would even know what “log scale” means.

There's your answer. To 90% of elected officials, a "log scale" sounds like something a timber company might weigh their product with.

The growth rate is the same in other regions but delayed, and there is some hope that the rest of the country might be able to cope with it better if the lock down measures are effective.

"Normalcy bias can cause people to drastically underestimate the effects of the disaster. Therefore, people think that they will be safe even though information from the radio, television, or neighbors gives them reasons to believe there is a risk."

People just don't want to believe a disaster is about to happen. They will grasp at straws to explain why everything is going to be fine.

That's usually not a problem because disasters are rare, but it will catch us under-prepped when an actual disaster happens.

They do seem to be missing Denmark though, which should stick out somewhere top-left of Norway.

I was just talking, via text, to a friend in Norway. They're going for major restrictions on contact and the people there are not worried enough yet. I sent her that graph.

Open air walks are ok, as long as you keep a reasonable distance to other people. Only go shopping if it's absolutely necessary.

And yet some people are still going to crowded bars, like nothing's going on. It's amazing how stubborn some people are.