charleshughsmith | Here's a sampling of complacent assertions being made about the COVID-19 virus as if they were certitudes:
It's no worse than a bad cold.
It's less deadly than a normal flu.
You can't catch it unless you're in sustained close contact with a carrier.
Carriers are only contagious for 14 days. After that, you're home free.
A vaccine is just around the corner.
The Chinese government has it under control.
Only 2,000 people have died, it's no big deal.
The few cases in other countries are being managed, and it will soon disappear.
The pandemic will fade away by April due to rising temperatures.
China's GDP will only take a 1% hit, and global growth will only drop 0.25%.
Interestingly, there is no large-scale, credible data to support any of these claims. But the complacent are not just falling for false claims being passed off as "facts" rather than what they really are--magical thinking--they're making a much larger error known as Survivorship Bias.
