# The media is driving our defensive actions not science! **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [April 8, 2020, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-media-is-driving-our-defensive-actions-not-science/851355 "2020-04-08T16:41:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 72
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2020, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-media-is-driving-our-defensive-actions-not-science/851355/72 "2020-04-10T11:37:31Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > This is the same attitude that fucked over a ton of people when Hurricane Sandy hit the NY area. There had been many hurricane warnings and evacuation orders in the past and nothing much happened, so why move this time? Basically, everyone in Rockaway, Queens, who didn’t evacuate, for example, ended up losing their car, everything in their basement, and some lost their lives. > > Anyway, hopefully the current outbreak is changing your mind about that. > > Also, AIDS killed tons of people in Africa. Also also, no one was telling everyone to shut down because of any of those diseases you mentioned, but clearly there was something about this one that had the experts shitting their pants early on. So, actually, I have no idea why you mentioned those. I am not saying it was the correct action to ignore the warnings. But that’s human nature and it needs to be accounted for in any response. Hurricane warnings are a great example. I used to live in Florida. A hurricane approaches, people clear the store shelves, put shutters up, and it veers off to the north and out to sea. All for nothing it seems. And sure AIDS killed tons of people in Africa. But that’s “over there” not here. Call it racist or xenophobic, but that is how people react to things. You ever listen to the radio and hear that an earthquake hit and killed 3,000 people and you lean in and hear, “in Pakistan” and you change the channel? If they had said “in California” you would have said “oh my God!” and read all of the articles when you got home. It is not because you hate Pakistanis or brown people in general. People feel what hits their own backyard. Fear and know-it-all ism also plays a part. I get to feel superior when I sneer at these lemmings running around putting up hurricane shutters. I know better. Nobody, including me, is saying that this is the right response. But any proposal must take into account these attitudes. It does no good to propose something that requires a near universal response or to pick out one example of a group of people congregating in a park as the reason why the plan failed. If the plan did not take into account that yahoos would ignore the directive, then it was a shitty plan from the start. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-media-is-driving-our-defensive-actions-not-science/851355)._