Skip to main content

Panic Pandemic

Humans are bizzare animals.

It is evident in their knee jerk reactions to a lot of daily events.  The outcome of these ill thought reactions costs them dearly than if they had taken a calmer perspective of things.

Case in point.  Coronavirus.

While it is important to acknowledge the virus and its symptoms and its causes the reaction seems out of proportion.  Long lines to get the hell out of the entire country of China (with no international carrier flying in) when the epicenter is a small province with a specific set of conditions that triggered the virus to jump to a human is a case study in Panic Pandemic not viral pandemic.

Also the fact that when treated the symptoms go away and person fully recovers has been ignored.  It is being treated like a death warrant.  It is like a global dead humans walking movie.

The cascading repercussions of this reaction is the effect it has on global capital markets.  Stocks swing from one end to another.  People freak out and stockpile crap that they will need for doomageddon.  And many more.

Lot of psychologists and people that study our species have observed that our ability to assess risk quantitatively and practically is extremely poor.  We latch on to words like terrorist threat and believe that it is a significant issue when the likelihood of someone dying from coronary heart failure is 10x real.  But hey can't stop me from my QP with Cheese.  Yah real yellow slice of American cheese.

Say cheese!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

Peru, South America - Week well spent

Growing up in India the only Peru I knew of was a tropical fruit (Guava for those whose lingua is English).   Not until high school did I discover that it was also a country in the South American continent. So it was this early April week that we decided to hit up Peru - the land of the once glorious Inca people that lived 500 years ago.  Today Peru is the third largest country on that continent with a diverse geography that stretches from the drier Pacific coast plains to the high mountains of the Andes and the Amazon river valley to its east. Our trip was primarily a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the last remaining, lost (now found and documented), large scale, mostly undamaged, city of the Inca nobility, called Machu Picchu (MP).  The Inca were great architects and builders.  MP is a UNESCO world heritage site affording it high visibility to the tourism trade and therefore crowded year round.  Our timing was not quite high season allowing us...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...