QatzelOk wrote:
MY MASS MEDIA-CONSUMING FRIENDS
Most of my friends who watch a lot of mass media... are scared to death of COVID
MISPERCEPTIONS OF RISKSix months into this pandemic, Americans still dramatically misunderstand the risk of dying from COVID-19:
On average, Americans believe that people aged 55 and older account for just over half of total COVID-19 deaths; the actual figure is 92%.
Americans believe that people aged 44 and younger account for about 30% of total deaths; the actual figure is 2.7%.
Americans overestimate the risk of death from COVID-19 for people aged 24 and younger
by a factor of 50; and they think the risk for people aged 65 and older is half of what it actually is (40% vs 80%).
These results are nothing short of stunning. Mortality data have shown from the very beginning that the COVID-19 virus age-discriminates, with deaths overwhelmingly concentrated in people who are older and suffer comorbidities. This is perhaps the only uncontroversial piece of evidence we have about this virus. Nearly all US fatalities have been among people older than 55; and yet a large number of Americans are still convinced that the risk to those younger than 55 is almost the same as to those who are older.
SHARE OF COVID-19 DEATHS BY AGE: BELIEFS VS. DATAEstimates of the distribution of COVID-19 deaths reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Sources: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), as of July 22, 2020This misperception translates directly into a degree of fear for one’s health that for most people vastly exceeds the actual risk: we find that the share of people who are very worried or somewhat worried of suffering serious health consequences should they contract COVID-19 is almost identical across all age brackets between 25 and 64 years old, and it’s not far below the share for people 65 and older.
The discrepancy with the actual mortality data is staggering: for people aged 18–24, the share of those worried about serious health consequences is 400 times higher than the share of total COVID deaths; for those age 25–34 it is 90 times higher. The chart below truly is worth a thousand words:
FEAR OF HEALTH CONSEQUENCES FROM COVID-19 VS. ACTUAL MORTALITY DATA, BY AGE BRACKETShare of respondents worried for serious health effects from coronavirus compared to deaths reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Sources: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), as of July 22, 2020PARTISANSHIP AND SOCIAL MEDIAFor the last six months, we have all read and talked about nothing but COVID-19; how can there be still such a widespread, fundamental misunderstanding of the basic facts? Our poll results identify two major culprits: the quality of information and the extreme politicization of the COVID-19 debate:
People who get their information predominantly from social media have the most erroneous and distorted perception of risk.
Those who identify as Democrats tend to mistakenly overstate the risk of death from COVID-19 for younger people much more than Republicans.This, sadly, comes as no surprise. Fear and anger are the most reliable drivers of engagement; scary tales of young victims of the pandemic, intimating that we are all at risk of dying, quickly go viral; so do stories that blame everything on your political adversaries. Both social and traditional media have been churning out both types of narratives in order to generate more clicks and increase their audience.
The fact that the United States is in an election year has exacerbated the problem. Stories that emphasize the dangers of the pandemic to all age cohorts and tie the risk to the Administration’s handling of the crisis likely tend to resonate much more with Democrats than Republicans. This might be a contributing factor to why, in our survey results, Democrats tend to overestimate the risk of dying from COVID-19 for different age cohorts to a greater extent than Republicans do.
https://www.franklintempleton.com/inves ... ience.html