The Painful Arrogance of The Self-Obsessed in Times of Crisis
“The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance” - Albert Einstein
This morning I woke up and, for the first time, saw this March 6th tweet from Elon Musk:
As of today, this tweet has received nearly 2 million likes. I then read this factually inconsistent article by Heather Mac Donald, author of the book The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture. In the article “Compared to what?” linked above, Mac Donald makes the following claim (on March 13th): “Currently, colleges and universities are shutting down with no hint of the virus in their vicinity.” In one fell swoop, Mac Donald continues to act like an expert on universities, although to my knowledge and from her resume it would appear she has never been employed at one, and now a virologist. I already addressed the threat to universities here, but just to add a sad punctuation mark to her “no hint” claim, on the very next day, my alma mater, Vanderbilt University, announced an on-campus case of COVID-19, and the most recent school I visited, Yale, announced three. Nothing in their vicinity indeed.
Mac Donald then goes on to completely misunderstand the singular construct she is trying to deny in her article. “Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of .000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to .12 percent…” — putting that forward as some far fetched possibility, when in fact by an exponential growth curve that “ten-thousand-fold” jump would happen in just 13 days, given an exponential growth factor of two, for example. Keep in mind this is the same person who said in the sentence immediately above, “Much has been made of the ‘exponential’ rate of infection in European and Asian countries — as if the spread of all transmittable diseases did not develop along geometric, as opposed to arithmetic, growth patterns.” And yet she does not even have the arithmetic ability, or fact checking desire, to calculate the frankly exceptionally short period of time it actually takes to increase something exponentially “ten-thousand-fold.”
Musk, Mac Donald, and the multitudes of others who for some reason feel entitled to tell you that you are overreacting — why are they wrong? For starters, here is some actual data rather than word-smithed pandering to the masses from the entitled and relatively safe.
As of March 14.
What we know is that the nations that have reacted strongly are the ones that have successfully beaten back the growth curve of the virus. Exactly the opposite of what Musk and Mac Donald arrogantly thumped online. To quote author Elizabeth Gilbert, “Overreacting about people who are overreacting is just another form of overreacting.” Except in this case, this form of overreacting is to tell people to go about their daily lives. It’s to twist “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” into a serial killer. And now to the arrogance.
What Musk and Mac Donald, et al. are doing is prioritizing themselves and others like them (including me!) who are incredibly unlikely to die of COVID-19, and dismissing the elderly, the disabled, the chronically-ill, and the immunocompromised. Go live your life without fear, as Mac Donald pridefully remarks: “Fear of the disease, and not the disease itself, has already spoiled that for us.” Disregard the amazing acts of solidarity by most of us who are sacrificing our normal lives so that our doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers can bear less of a burden in the coming weeks, as Musk would ask you to do — one tin soldier rides again.
So I will end with a really simple analogy: ebola has a 90% morbidity rate. If there were an ebola-infected stranger knocking on Mac Donald’s or Musk’s door and they were given three options:
Let them in
Lock the door
Lock the door and call the police
I absolutely guarantee you both would opt for choice (3), and understandably so. But for any neighbor next door, please whatever you do, just make sure you don’t panic and disturb our house on top of the hill.