Why are people covidiots? What’s the psychology?

[Davespecifico]

I’m struggling to understand how families can watch the news, scroll Facebookand so on and not fail to see, over and over again, ‘stay home, save lives, protect the NHS.’

Really, what are they actually thinking? What goes on in their minds?

I am really worried even about my daily short walk or having to go to the supermarket. But I’m risk averse.

I wonder if there should be a new strategy to appeal to people who are more gung-ho and on the opposite end of the risk taking spectrum from me?

Normalcy Bias. Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a tendency for people to believe that things will function in the future the way they normally have functioned in the past and therefore to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects.

Natural optimists believe it will never happen to them, until it does.

It's weird as the only bit of comfort I have is that we are all doing as much as we can to protect ourselves.
I'm already feeling stressed about going to the supermarket on Wednesday 🙄🤞

I think its also cognitive dissonance. I am alright jack thinking.

What I find interesting is the same person worried about missiles in North Korea is not practising social distancing properly. What?!

I think some have a need to not conform, to not be told what to do. Maybe gives a sense of control. I think this is the case with exp anyway

A selfish, entitled, all-about-me, I deserve it all attitude that has permeated our celebrity obsessed society over the last 10 years. It does not surprise me one bit.

We were talking about this at work. I think some of it is that people are just used to being able to do whatever they want. And certainly for our area, I think there are a lot of people who haven’t known anyone who’s definitely had covid-19 yet. So see warnings about the NHS struggling and people dying, but that isn’t borne out by their reality. There’s a lot of murmerings about London fucking things up for the north, as usual. I have a certain amount of sympathy for that last comment tbh.

Then there’s a swathe of people who just don’t believe they’ll get very sick, and don’t have older family members to care about, and therefore since it’s not going to affect them personally they just don’t care. Selfish, basically, but that’s the way society’s gone.

Cowardly? Facing up to reality is too much?

I am very, very sceptical about what we are being told by the media machine and authorities. But, I am still behaving as if all the scaremongering is true, just in case. I am doing everything I am told to do, for now at least.

I think many, many people are sceptical. I also think some people would rather catch the 'virus' than be totally controlled.

Thanks Lurksascending. I just read the Wikipedia entry for normality bias. It looks as if the government response is quite clearly matched to the ways normality bias can be counteracted.

I’ve often thought that advertising to prevent danger should be much more specific so that people will know you’re talking about them. If government ads about Corona were to show the actual situations police are dealing with e.g. going to a family bbq or travelling down to Dorset and to show clearly how the C can be transmitted and then show the potential effects, people might understand that it’s about what they do too.

I’ve thought the same about advertising regarding domestic abuse. In gp surgeries, on busses etc, you’ll see posters asking, ‘Are you in an abusive relationship? If so, call this number. The problem with that is the person might not know what constitutes domestic abuse and therefore ignore the message. If the adverts listed forms of domestic abuse or showed them in picture form, more people would respond.

They find each other and convince themselves that everyone else are OTT idiots.

There’s a lot of murmerings about London fucking things up for the north, as usual. I have a certain amount of sympathy for that last comment tbh

Bloody hell. What actually have we done barring have a contagious disease circulating in a massive global conurbation ? Do you have different antibodies outside of London ?

The people saying ‘London are fucking things up for the north’ are as thick as shit.

London is ahead of the north. The north will follow the same trajectory, just a few weeks behind. The chief scientific advisor says this about three times a week at the briefings.

I honestly think some people believe that if they don’t know anybody who has been in ICU or died, it’s I’m alright Jack. Those people will have a sharp shock down the line.

Not sure on the psychology, but I'm seeing opportunists who think now is the time to get on the roads in sports cars and speed around. Regular gym goers who risk spreading it by running on narrow pavements past shoppers and those out for a walk because they are 'in the zone' and don't seem to even register anyone else in the vacinity. But there are also runners keeping distance and getting in the road to avoid people. Mostly people are being considerate and maintaining distance where I walk.

What @LurksAscending posted plus a dose of denial. There’s enough people agreeing with them for them to not be affected by peer pressure. If they were the only ones doing it they’d be a lot more self-conscious about it on the whole.

I get it - this is a crisis we have no frame of reference for or tools to deal with mentally and when the enormity of it hits it’s frightening. People are hitting that at different stages but I can understand sticking your head in the sand - it’s much easier.

We all take risks all the time - just look at the ROSPA figures every year for accident causes, many of them things we all do every day without even thinking about it.

Driving is pretty risky so we mitigate the risk by imposing speed limits, banning drink driving and using mobile phones and professional drivers have limits on how long they can work to minimise the risk of driving while tired.

What we don’t do is ban driving outright even though we know for a certainty that thousands of people every year will be killed and injured - as a society we accept that risk because we generally feel it’s outweighed by the benefits and we tend to assume it won’t happen to us.

People have very different attitudes to risk and many probably think that with only a small percentage of the population infected, the chances of them coming into contact with the virus are pretty low.

I’m wfh, washing my hands regularly, not seeing friends and family, only going out to walk the dogs and to the shop. I’m not wearing a mask, disinfecting shopping, changing my clothes and showering when I come back into the house - all of which seem to me to be utterly OTT and not evidence-based, given what we know about this virus and similar corona viruses. So my perception of risk is greater than some people’s and much less than others. I certainly wouldn’t be calling either group covidiots

The one family who is flouting the rules that I know are convinced the government are out to control us. They are low risk of death or serious illness so are not personally scared of the virus and think the harm to their kids of being cooped up outweigh the harms of the virus.

Mil is worried about her Belgian best friend who is not taking it seriously.
They are both mid 80s and mil thinks the problem is, when she was growing up in Nazi occupied Belgium it was a matter of honour not to do what the voices on the radio were telling you to do - she can't get out of that resistance to authority mindset.

This is obviously a very specific example but I think many people have similar issues around authority for different reasons. Here I am seeing people who frame it as resisting the Tories. They are busy pointing out the inequality in suffering caused by the measures and they are not wrong in the least but I want to scream - don't they see that there is also inequality of deaths, and no matter whose fault it is, we need to prioritise stopping it for everyone's sake.

Also, we live in a more neo-liberalistic society, which encourages individualism over collectivism. Now that it is important for communities to function as one, rather than as individual self-contained 'units', it is difficult for the population as a whole to rapidly change entrenched behaviour.

So from what I’ve read here so far, the reasons people are ignoring warnings are:
normality bias - tendency to believe things will function as they have done
Selfishness
Deriving comfort from hearing others confirming that their attitude is ok
Gives a sense of control
Cognitive dissonance - I’m alright Jack
Can’t face up to reality
Disregard for/anti authority
Used to doing what they want to
Seeing it as a conspiracy/scare mongering
Sense of entitlement - rules are for others
Stupidity

So if anyone who has any responsibility for government Covid advertising is reading this, here are the factors you need to counteract.

I’m just saying what I’ve heard, what people have been saying up here, and that I can kind of see some of their points.

Their argument is that this got out of control in London/the SE far before it really hit the rest of the country. London didn’t control it at all. Londoners fled to second homes, or otherwise away, contributing to its spread. Londoners couldn’t stay off the Tube or maintain social distancing. London was ahead of the rest of the country, yet the whole country had to shut down.

Meanwhile, London already had more companies wfh, and industries where wfh is an option. The north and midlands have a lot more manufacturing and industry, which have either shut down completely, furloughed their staff (although in many cases without pay atm, and no sense of hope they’ll open again), or are still making their staff work, putting them at risk. And these are people and industries already struggling after years of austerity and lack of regional development.

It’s shit for everyone, but there’s definitely even more anti-London/SE sentiment up here than there has been for a long while.

I have a friend who believes vaccines cause autism but doesn't believe in coronavirus. She reckons lockdown is optional where she lives (Channel Islands) and it's all a load of rubbish.

In what way is London fucking it up for the North?
In that it’s London’s fault that the pandemic is here? Or in that London only should have tougher lockdown because it is/was the epicentre?

Sorry! Cross posted there.

Pleasedontdothat well what would you call the knobs that get to go do their horses every day on private land in the middle of nowhere, and treat it as time to while away the afternoon with others owners, sitting next to each other, having chats and BBQs and letting kids from different households play together for hours. if not covidiots what are they?