Why we are scared of exponential growth
Through an unprecedented and mono-thematic media hype around COVID-19, hundreds of millions of world citizens live in fear. The main argument of fear by the media narrative has been the exponential growth of the virus. But what exactly does exponential mean and why do we have a hard time understanding it? Here?s a quick think task: Imagine folding a letter sized copy paper in half, then in half again, and so on. How thick will it be after folding it 50 times? 100 Meters? 1 Mile? Maybe even 100 Kilometers? The correct answer is 100 million kilometers, which is roughly the distance between the earth and the sun! Exponential growth doubles with each interval and transforms seemingly neglecting matters into gigantic dimensions.
No evolutionary need for exponential thinking
As you can see in the interactive chart of human evolution below, more than 99% of our ancestors lived in a perfectly linear world and embedded into the laws of nature. Picking twice as much berries from the bush required twice the time and doubled the danger of getting attacked by a wild animal. Besides the fact that the fridge was not invented yet. Exponential thinking was simply not useful for survival and that is why, or brain is programmed by default on linear thinking. Exponential thinking requires quite a bit of brain juice, math and imagination. This is why most of us (including me) are terrible at it.
The unknown is filled with fear
Exponential thinking is not only hard to do, but even hard to imagine (take a calculator if you don?t believe the 100 million kilometer think paper). Anything that we don?t know scares us. Remember the nasty feeling before a school test without proper preparation. The big majority of us are neither epidemiologist nor math professors, and this is why the exponential growth of an invisible and new virus scares the hell out of us.
Flu seasons are called seasons for a reason
But wait a minute. If we look at the flu season in Switzerland throughout the last four years (Source), we recognize a yearly exponential growth, which is then followed by a sudden exponential decrease of the same magnitude.
No doubt, the particularly aggressive COVID-19 virus has taken thousands of lives and will continue to do so within the weeks to come. But there is absolutely nothing new or particular about the anatomy of the COVID-19 flu. Throughout all previous flu seasons, the exponential decrease of infected people occurred without an unheard-of media coverage, social distancing, let alone lockdown of entire countries.
The worst moment to panic is now
The real questions to ask are therefore: Why do hundreds of highly qualified health professionals assume an ongoing exponential growth of the virus? Have they all been infected by the media-virus of fear? Or do they know something the public does not know (yet)? Or is there a hidden agenda behind the synchronized mainstream media selling Angst and creating uproar across the globe? It was Winston Churchill who said, ?Never let a good crisis go to waste?. And Milton Friedman, arguably one of the most radical proponents of free-market capitalism, once said: ?Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.?
The worst possible timing for panic and fear is now. In order to preserve and protect human rights and democratic rules from more radical capitalism run by fewer individuals, we must stay more vigilant then ever.
