6 Hypotheses on why Covid-19 pandemic might have been overrated:

6 Hypotheses on why Covid-19 pandemic might have been overrated:

Note: The hypotheses are ranked based on their likelihood in descending order. 

1) [Misattribution of deaths counter]

The daily death numbers of covid19 patients might have died because of heart diseases, diabetes, stroke but mis-attributed (or sloppily attributed) to COVID19.

 

2) [Iatrogenics]

If COVID-19 receives less public attention, people who contracted it would just rest at home instead of coalescing with other patients in hospitals (When we get normal flu, we don’t go to hospital). Staying at home alone heals the patient better, while putting all COVID-19 positive people together in hospitals made their situation worse.

 

3) [Anchoring problem]

The Earth has 7 billion people. Malaysia has 0.02 billion people. Actually, before year 2020, every single day lots of people died because of illnesses, but we never felt them and never feared them, because they were almost never reported widely by any media. If you are not aware of misery, life can be very peaceful.

 

Likewise, nowadays lots of people still die daily because of heart attack, cancer, stroke, kidney failure, if we measure them we will get a large number too. Humans tend to tunnel on whatever that is measured (It was a strength when we were hunter-gatherers). We are measuring COVID19 like how a miser measures money every day, and like a miser who is doomed to forever feel poor forever, we are doomed to forever feel COVID19 is catastrophic.

4) [Misattribution of daily cases counter a.k.a Fear Mongering due to incentive misalignment of a democratic government]

Since a pandemic really threatens the reputation of government and demolishes the trust of citizens towards the government, and since in a democracy the government would do everything possible to garner votes, the government would rather lower the threshold of swab test to maximise the number of daily cases to invoke fear.

Only by fearmongering, the public would behave and then the pandemic could possibly be annihilated. Only when COVID19 is annihilated, the public’s trust towards government could be restored.

 

5) [Madness of crowd towards something novel + unknown]

Death is a taboo. Almost all humans tremble whenever they are prompted, however remote, to imagine it. Since COVID19 seems like a fancy name, and since it is ‘unprecedented’, and since humans really love storymaking and narratives, we concoct all kinds of mythological stories around it.

We ignore the actual statistics and death rate, and would rather relish over the fascinatingly gloomy stories of covid19 as a ‘deadly virus’. As a result, people stop thinking and replace ‘0.2% death rate’ with ‘DEADLY VIRUS please avoid by all means’.

It is possible to beat a really formidable and strong enemy, it is not possible to beat an imaginary enemy. Like air, you can’t punch it.

6) [Conspiracy theories, Truman Show, fake news]

All authorities (governments, deep states, media) conspire together to fabricate a Truman show in order to exert absolutely dominating influence over citizens. Every single process including the news headlines, swab tests, daily cases counter are all heavily planned and manipulated in order to maximise the “number” of COVID19 cases.

 

[Wildcard 1 that supports the hypothesis that COVID19 is overrated]

Sweden has exerted almost no lockdown since the beginning. And the country still exists.

[Wildcard 2 that supports the hypothesis that COVID19 is overrated]

Boris Johnson declared that on 19th July the entire UK will NOT need to wear masks and there will NOT be any restriction of gathering (even if it is 10,000 people) anymore

Daily cases:
UK: 35,000+
Malaysia: 11,000+

Total cases per 1M population:
UK: 75,000+
Malaysia: 25,000+