Comment by satysin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by satysin | Hacker News Reader

This is so sad to see and from looking at the number of people who travelled for Thanksgiving last week I think it is almost certain that these kind of daily death numbers will continue into the new year :(

Honestly I don't really know what to say when I see these headlines anymore. I am in [redacted] but have many friends and family in the US and hearing the stories from them is both saddening and infuriating.

Sadly my own friends and family that I used to respect and look up to have shown themselves as fools this year. People I used to think of as very intelligent falling for the most insane conspiracy theories and other such nonsense. It has been really eye opening in an increasingly depressing way.

And on top of that as someone from the UK (but now living in [redacted]) I also have the stupidness of Brexit to deal with.

People talk about the impact of lockdowns on mental health but honestly that wasn't a big deal to me, the biggest impact to me this year has been the stupidity and selfishness of so many people. It is draining having to listen to people talk about 5G spreading the virus or Bill Gates wants to microchip you with the vaccine or going on rants that surgical masks lead to a dangerous build up of CO2.

There is something seriously wrong with the human race. A shocking lack of education and rational rather than emotional thinking for starters.

Sorry I guess my comment doesn't really add to the discourse. Guess I just needed to just put something 'out there' rather than it just rattle around in my head right now.

> Sadly my own friends and family that I used to respect and look up to have shown themselves as fools this year.

This has been the most astonishing fact of life that has come out of Covid. Blown away by discovering the same. I think a whole lot of humans must have discovered this fact for the first time in their life.

The thing is I am without a doubt a person of average intelligence and what I don't "get" is how people whom I know are more intelligent that me doing the most stupid things.

I try to listen to as many different perspectives as possible, look up claims I hear being made, listen to experts in the respective fields and err on the side of caution.

Back in March when medical experts said masks are unlikely to help I was like "okay well that sucks but they know much more about this kind of thing so I will just keep my distance, etc". Then when some data showed that actually masks do seem to help I didn't argue. I listened to the reasons for the change in advice and it all sounded, to me at least, perfectly reasonable. Yet I still hear people saying medical experts are "flip flopping" on masks as if changing ones advice based on new, scientifically backed information is a bad thing.

Highly intelligent people I know have made comments to me about masks, 5G, Bill Gates microchip vaccines, "Plandemic" and all that kind of stuff.

Sadly I have a (second) aunt that has been sucked into the QAnon madness. She honest to god believes the election was stolen from Trump. She isn't even American! She is a lamb farmer in Wales that still believes Brexit is going to be the best thing ever. But that is a conversation for a different thread.

I am just mentally exhausted from it all. I miss the days of moon landing and what really goes on at Area 51 conspiracies.

Intelligence is pattern recognition, and the ability to understand and process complex ideas. Many other things inform decision making - emotion, tribal allegiance, ego, paranoia, perspective, etc. And so, a more intelligent person can definitely come to a worse conclusion. And can even do so selectively: they may come to an excellent conclusion on one topic, and a foolish conclusion on another.

> The thing is I am without a doubt a person of average intelligence and what I don't "get" is how people whom I know are more intelligent that me doing the most stupid things.

And here I keep getting told IQ is the measure of competence

High IQ people probably still reacted better to covid on average.

I have not seen much new evidence seen the super-early SSC mask review, which concluded that the masks probably help a tiny bit and are worth wearing but not game-changing. So the authorities did flip flop, and I suspect it’s because they needed some bullshit magic to sell to people to make them feel in control.

I completely share your opinion.

Some things blow my mind: fellow good earning engineer uses subway few times a week he goes to the office. Afterward his corona app tells him to go and do test. He does test like every 2 weeks. And he owns a car:-/

My colleagues never wear masks in the office. My manager starts always with “this is another flue” story, but he at least wears a mask.

Which company so I can avoid it?

It’s good one in USA with not that good German branch.

Given the prevalence of conspiracy theories suggesting Covid is a man-made virus, Democrats cheated to steal the election, and companies making vaccines waited until after the election to publish their results, I'm surprised that a conspiracy theory that liberals are trying to keep the vaccine for themselves hasn't been floating around. Receiving the vaccine "they don't want you to take" would be a great way to stick it to the liberal elite Deep State. /s

Reply on news.ycombinator.com