Scares in the Past that have Blown Over

[Rod Sheridan]

How about the infamous Y2K computer "meltdown" debacle that didn't happen?

Well, for the most part that didn't happen because we spent a year correcting it before the due date..........Rod.

[Garth Sheane]

David, your thread links to a notion I've noodled around for several years. Are North Americans fairly easy to spook? I think about this relative to terrorism. If we are easy to spook, we can be paralyzed. I don't think we are easy to spook, but I'm also not sure that we've really had that tested in our generation. Perhaps the media could be accused of making mountains out of molehills ... they seem to try to dramatize everything. This desensitizes us to some degree, like the boy that cried wolf too often. I don't know what it would take to produce a collective fear that would change us, but something will. It would have to have some sense of randomness about it, like "it could happen to anybody, anywhere, anytime".

[Rod Sheridan]

I'm old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis-- actually I knew nothing about Cubans or missiles, but I still remember weeks of movies about bombs, fallout, fallout shelters, learning the Civil Defense logo, eating dried foods, washing the dust off outside food if you survived and ventured outside...

And what about the SARS(?) virus, is that still going?

And Y2K... The last thing I could take seriously, were those people trying to convince me that my computer, which could do millions of complex math calculations per second, somehow didn't know how to count to 2000...

Well, as someone who lived in ground zero for SARS, it was scary. My next door neighbour contracted it.

Y2K, at work we systems that had the Y2K problem, it wasn't trivial for us..........Rod.

[Larry Browning]

And Y2K... The last thing I could take seriously, were those people trying to convince me that my computer, which could do millions of complex math calculations per second, somehow didn't know how to count to 2000...

The problem was not counting, it was data storage. In a effort to save disk and memory space (because disk space and memory was expensive back in the 70's and 80's when much of this was originally developed) many database tables and memory variables would only store the year as 2 digits. So when the years rolled over to '00' from '99' sort orders were totally screwed up along with all sorts of program logic checking for dates greater than or less than another another date, etc, etc. I spent hours and hours poring over code trying to fix it. The only really way to fix it was to add 2 more digits to the year and then adjust all the code accessing dates. BTW: there is going to be a Y10K thing coming up, but I won't have to deal with that one! Which is the same logic the programmers in the 60s and 70s were using!

[David Weaver]

David, your thread links to a notion I've noodled around for several years. Are North Americans fairly easy to spook? I think about this relative to terrorism. If we are easy to spook, we can be paralyzed. I don't think we are easy to spook, but I'm also not sure that we've really had that tested in our generation. Perhaps the media could be accused of making mountains out of molehills ... they seem to try to dramatize everything. This desensitizes us to some degree, like the boy that cried wolf too often. I don't know what it would take to produce a collective fear that would change us, but something will. It would have to have some sense of randomness about it, like "it could happen to anybody, anywhere, anytime".

I have a couple of personal theories on it, but I'm no social scientist for sure. I think that the desire to worry about something no matter what must be a carry over from a time when it was needed to survive. Now that it's easy for us to survive, we don't have the ability to shut off the worry, so we worry about ridiculous things instead.

If we had to think a little harder about how to keep ourselves fed and clothed, we wouldn't have as much time or be so consumed with these types of things.

We also seem to have a level of need for the new things to worry about (that are unreasonable) to rotate, to keep things fresh so that they are unknown. If we went through a period of a year where there were 100 cases of ebola in the US, say, people would probably stop worrying about it because they would find something new that has more unknown.

At the same time, we have a much greater chance of getting cancer, heart disease, ...or even stuff like lupus or ALS, but we don't seem to be sensationally consumed with those things. They don't change much or stay fresh and new, so we don't care, I guess.

All of it confuses me, because I like to worry, but over time I've started questioning what I'm worrying about, and often that allows me to just turn it off to some extent. I think about what I'm worried about and figure 1) if it's something I could do something about, I won't allow myself to worry about it, because worry without action is pointless. 2) if it's something I can't do anything about, then I shut that off, too -why worry about things that are completely beyond our control?

There must be a reason we all do it, and I'd guess that it carries over from the days when worry was necessary to motivate us to do things we had to do to survive.

[Mel Fulks]

I think David has thought this thru pretty well. We are paying other people to handle this stuff with varying results. This
thread has made me think about Hawthorne's THE AMBITIOUS GUEST, sometimes perfect preparation doesn't work.

[Jim Koepke]

Nothing has ever been overcome or prevented by the power of people worrying.

Of course there is a power in being able to keep people tied in knots of fear and worry.

One comic looks at what could be done to stop the spread:

http://www.arcamax.com/politics/nickanderson/s-1574458

jtk

[Brian Elfert]

At the same time, we have a much greater chance of getting cancer, heart disease, ...or even stuff like lupus or ALS, but we don't seem to be sensationally consumed with those things. They don't change much or stay fresh and new, so we don't care, I guess.

None of these diseases are communicable. People worry about diseases that are fairly easy to catch through casual contact and are often deadly in a short period of time. None of the diseases list above typically kill someone quickly except heart disease and some fast growing advanced cancers.

I don't think the USA is particularly prone to worry about diseases. Asian countries panic just as much about diseases. How many Japanese were wearing masks during the bird flu scare? Heck, some people in Japan won't go outside without a mask ever.

[Jim Matthews]

I don't think the USA is particularly prone to worry about diseases. Asian countries panic just as much about diseases. How many Japanese were wearing masks during the bird flu scare? Heck, some people in Japan won't go outside without a mask ever.

Correlation isn't causality. What most of us know about Japanese popular culture would fill a small shot glass.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/l...health-reasons

The article says that the Japanese don the mask to prevent spreading a sniffle they already have, to others.
It's also noted in the article above that a product released in 2003 with Unicharm (not the cereal with only one marshmallow)
released a non-woven mask that gave hay fever sufferers some relief.

*******

I think that us Americans, lacking anything dreadful and imminently threatening raise the next lowest worry to emergency status.
Sometimes it's like watching an entire country lose it over Justin Bieber, or the latest manufactured "celebrity".

Ten years down the line, we're all looking at each other and wondering what all the fuss was about.

[David Weaver]

Jim, your bit under the stars is exactly my last point. That's what I think people do when they don't have any imminent concerns threatening life or family.

Based on how much I've been hearing from other people about enterovirus 68 and Ebola (I have young kinds, so E68 I guess has relevance for me if I were to have unreasonable worries), I'd say we've got plenty of manufactured mental trauma here, too - as in, we're not short on worry about remote probabilities.

E68 causes the mothers my wife talks to to get nutty (local people she knows with kids similar age to ours). When I tell her that I don't think we should even have a passing thought about it, she's off her rocker about that. There are no cases thus far of the virus in my city, though it's much more likely to show up here than ebola, it still has more news potential than anything else, but in numbers of serious problems, it's few. It's almost like it's a branding thing. If cancers and regular flu, and pneumonia, etc, have caused more child fatality this year, they're too general. But E68 has a label, it's almost like a brand. The branding is more contagious than the virus.

[John Pratt]

That's what I think people do when they don't have any imminent concerns threatening life or family.

I used to know someone that always said, "If you don't have third world worries, you have first world problems." Which is to say that we dont have to worry about clean tap water or getting along without electricity (with few exceptions), so we go running through the streets screaming when the cable tv is out. A bit of an exageration, but you get the point.

The media doesn't help. How many time have we heard about the next SNOWMAGGEDON and then everyone runs out to the stores and picks them clean. Same with the disease du jour. Who would have guessed there were that many medical experts on call for the tv networks.

[Jay Jolliffe]

How about this...Four weeks ago I had an echocardiogram. Talked with the Dr. & he tells me I have a mass in my heart. In the upper right chamber. Also tells me he can rule out that it's a shadow. So then he tells me it's either a tumor or a blood clot about the size of a large grape. Wants me to go home & he'll schedule another echo done down my throat in three weeks. Google is the worst thing to do in this case. Called him back & told him I wanted the echo right away & I wasn't waiting three weeks. Had it in six days & found out it was a shadow....So for six days I was scared shi**ess...I'm glad it wasn't the tumor or blood clot....but that six days was a killer....Now they have to look other places to find out whats wrong with me....

[David Weaver]

Google is bad if you start reading about ailments, you can imagine all kinds of terminal scenarios if you allow yourself to.

I'm at a very high risk for melanoma, and constantly get cut up and then have to wait for biopsy results. The first thing that I had excised I worried that I might have mets because the Dr said that the type of lesion is sometimes seen with metastatic cancers. For two weeks, I acted like a dead man walking - what a waste that was. When they slice me up now, I don't even think about the results until I get stitches out. Even if something gets me one of these times, I'd rather be happy those two weeks than worry about it.

[ray hampton]

Google is bad if you start reading about ailments, you can imagine all kinds of terminal scenarios if you allow yourself to.

I'm at a very high risk for melanoma, and constantly get cut up and then have to wait for biopsy results. The first thing that I had excised I worried that I might have mets because the Dr said that the type of lesion is sometimes seen with metastatic cancers. For two weeks, I acted like a dead man walking - what a waste that was. When they slice me up now, I don't even think about the results until I get stitches out. Even if something gets me one of these times, I'd rather be happy those two weeks than worry about it.

is melanoma the name for skin cancer ?
do the black or other dark skin people get skin cancer as often as the white people ?

[David Weaver]

Yes to the first question and no to the second. All things being equal (as in sun exposure), people with fair skin are at a higher risk, as are people with a history of abnormal moles and people with a family history of melanoma.