Re:A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal
by bumby on Friday April 10, 2020 @11:13AM
(#22833828)
I think the problem is how we look at risk in the context of our cognitive biases.
Although given a long enough timeline a pandemic is all but guaranteed, on a annual or election cycle it scores pretty low on the probability scale. Our gauge of the severity may have been misrepresented due to the once-in-a-century nature of this event.
Juxtapose that with issues that people face in the immediate term like budget shortfalls, service disruptions creating disgruntled electorates, etc. I think it's easy for powers-to-be to convince themselves to gut preparations for a pandemic in favor of more 'guaranteed-to-happen' short term crises. Combining poor risk assessments with a recency bias can incentivize these kinds of decisions.
Re:A Long Time Until the Economic New Normal
by _curious_ on Friday April 10, 2020 @02:39PM
(#22836049)
Interesting perspective. It's as though the gov (read: we/us) have become distracted by the "risk" of a lot of the day to day social issues and minutiae at the expense of the real threats.
Although given a long enough timeline a pandemic is all but guaranteed, on a annual or election cycle it scores pretty low on the probability scale. Our gauge of the severity may have been misrepresented due to the once-in-a-century nature of this event.
Juxtapose that with issues that people face in the immediate term like budget shortfalls, service disruptions creating disgruntled electorates, etc. I think it's easy for powers-to-be to convince themselves to gut preparations for a pandemic in favor of more 'guaranteed-to-happen' short term crises. Combining poor risk assessments with a recency bias can incentivize these kinds of decisions.