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Originally Posted by someone123
I wonder what impact this will have on the way we think about risk, and the legalism around risk.
The fact is that we all must take risks every day and we are unaware of most of them. We all die eventually. Yet we also talk as though there is such a thing as zero risk, or that introducing a non-zero risk is a big deal.
I was reminded of this when I listened to (I think a lawyer or professor) talk about a hypothetical scenario where a business exposed a person to COVID-19. What if a delivery driver gives somebody COVID-19? It'll bring down the industry! This may have seemed like a reasonable way to think about this a few months ago but does our society have the bandwidth to turn a single exposure into a legal case in April 2019 when there are 2 million known global cases? The answer is clearly no.
Undercooked egg warnings or State of California cancer warnings on coffee look even sillier than normal right now.
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Humans are weird about risk.
For instance, we accept about 40,000 deaths per year (in North America) as a consequence of automobile use. If we limited the top speed of vehicles to 60 km/h, we'd have but a fraction of those deaths as the worst collisions (head-on with a closing velocity of 200 km/h+) would be eliminated. People won't accept this, despite it being well within our capability to do.
Many participate in high-risk activities, like motorcycling or extreme sports.
A fair number smoke, despite the risks of dying of lung cancer prematurely.
We've sanded off the rough edges of our society and made ordinary life seem pretty safe. Maybe we've built the illusion too well and people now think they are going to live forever.
I don't know many people who are terrified of COVID-19. Indeed, as this drags on, people might eventually start chafing at the restrictions on daily life, risk be damned. This all hinges on people's desire to be cooped up and in a democracy, government can only force the people with the implicit consent of the majority.
I don't know how this all ends.