COVID-19, Predictive Coding, and Terror Management

Pandemics have a way of bringing death into sharper focus in our everyday lives. As of this writing,1,188,259 people around the world have died from COVID-19, including 234,218 in the United States. In the dark days of April, the death rate was over 20%. Although this has declined dramatically (to 3%), it ’s utterly reckless to minimize the risks of coronavirus and flaunt every mitigation strategy endorsed by infectious disease specialists.“He ' s like an evil Oprah. You ' re getting COVID. And you ' re getting COVID!”One might think that contracting and recovering from COVID-19 would be a sobering experience for most people, but not for theÜbermensch (Nietzschean ' Superman ' ... but really, 'Last Man' is more appropriate) who had access to the latest experimental treatments.1 Trump ' s boastful reaction is exactly how the ' Coronavirus Episode ' of the (scripted) White House reality show was written: “I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” and “I ' m aperfect physical specimen. ”This dismissive display reinforces the partisan divide on perceptions of the pandemic and the federal response to it. A recent study byPew Research Center found major differences in how Democrats and Republicans view the severity of COVID-19. Results from the survey (conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020) were no surprise.   And as we know, Democrats and Republicans exist in alternate universes constructed bynon-overlapping media sources (CNN vs. Fox, to oversimplify), which...
Source: The Neurocritic - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Source Type: blogs