The Coronavirus: On Risk and Idiots

“As I have no skills to help with the virus, I would like to at least try to help in this small way instead. In any case, take precautions, stay calm, do not listen to dangerous idiots, keep yourself and your family safe, and good luck.”

I prepped for the virus. I have no special knowledge of medicine or biology, no less virology. Nor am I generally paranoid, nor even risk-averse; I love a good risk if the payoff profile suits. But I do have an expert, if amateur, interest in what might be called the philosophy of gambling, or—less politely—debunking absurdities in the interpretation of probability and the logic of risk taking. I have known for a long time that journalists and public intellectuals tend to be challenged in this regard. So, in prepping, I knew (and did not care) that I was going against the mainstream narrative of the risk posed by the virus. For a long time, I seemed to tune out just how dangerous this narrative could be—and how weirdly vacuous and clichéd its accompanying commentary seemed. Then, one day, it hit me. An incremental straw of risk-illiterate nonsense broke the camel’s back.

It happened last Friday. Cass Sunstein wrote an article for Bloomberg, the very first two sentences of which were the following inane contradiction:

“At this stage, no one can specify the magnitude of the threat from the coronavirus. But one thing is clear: A lot of people are more scared than they have any reason to be.”

Now, obviously, Sunstein is, by no means, alone in this dangerous idiocy. These people are everywhere. The New York Times told us that the real danger is “stigma”; Recode had a good old hoot at Andreessen Horowitz’s decision to ban handshakes, and “meh, flu” has become a meme unto itself. But Sunstein also happens to have a history of lacking any respect for individual decision-making that he does not understand and of which he has not approved, so I don’t feel bad about singling him out for public flogging.