# Why do conservatives take some diseases seriously, but not others? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 21, 2021, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-take-some-diseases-seriously-but-not-others/947012 "2021-07-21T22:48:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 18
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2021, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-take-some-diseases-seriously-but-not-others/947012/18 "2021-07-22T00:57:12Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > COVID kills poor city people. Not the real Americans. “It’s a disease that hits **others** , and you are exaggerating the risk to me, to trick me into supporting the policy decision **you** want.” Seen/heard it before. Some of us remember when there was a novel deadly infection, that some conservatives even in top leadership would not even mention much… except to point out it mainly hit homosexuals and heroin users. _Nice try, liberals who want to teach my children it’s OK to have sex if you use condoms._ * * * In 2020? _Nice try, liberals who want to undo the great economic success of Trump by shutting down the economy._ In 2021? _Nice try, liberals who want to pretend something could have been done better than Trump did!_ You’re exaggerating the risk and hiding the real source, trying to get me to turn away from Trump! > [@Velocity](#): > > Until conservatives perceive Covid as a gruesome disease, they won’t _behave_ as if it’s a gruesome disease. Dying on a ventilator with no visitors allowed is assumed to be a “first world” way to die. The family does not get to see you visibly turn into a living corpse before their eyes. Plus frankly, anything short of the dead piling up _in their driveways_ will fail to faze some of them. The average voter has no idea what the normal mortality rate is and the average person alive today in the US has little concept of what are the normal rates of fatal or long-term disabling outcomes of even “regular” diseases (see: Antivaxxing from pre-2020). We’re victims of our own past success. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-conservatives-take-some-diseases-seriously-but-not-others/947012)._