How ironic...

What 'Jaws' can teach us about our coronavirus response

The story takes place in a resort town called Amity over the July 4th weekend. It begins with a great white shark killing a young woman who is skinny dipping.

 

While her death was clearly the result of a shark attack, the town's mayor, Larry Vaughn, (played by Murray Hamilton) decides not to shut down the beaches. He's worried about losing the revenue. "Now, if people can't swim here, they'll be glad to swim at the beaches of Cape Cod, the Hamptons, Long Island," he says in the film. Police Chief Martin Brody (played by Roy Scheider) tries to change the mayor's position, convinced that the shark is real. But to no avail.

So, the best way that this person can describe Covid-19 is to compare it to a fictional story where one particular shark kills more people in a single movie scene than sharks kill all together in a year? Isn't it funny how there is no "real life" situations where a beach actually stayed open when it shouldn't because of shark deaths?

The reality is that shark attacks kill about 6-10 people a year and rarely attack anyone unprovoked. In fact generally speaking there are less than 100 attacks (of any sort) across the globe in a given year.

Of course, Covid-19 is probably a little more dangerous than that. A person under the age of 25 skinny dipping with friends has about a 0.00008% chance of catching and dying from Covid-19. Okay, realistically, there really isn't much difference in any practical sense. They'll have a better chance of dying from a sexually transmitted disease, alcohol poisoning, or driving home drunk.

But I digress...

Not only does this person have to use a fictional story, but the subject of the story (sharks) is another great example of something people fear in a very irrational way given the numbers. How many people do you suppose who swim in the ocean, at least at some level are afraid of a shark attack (regardless of how unlikely)?  Is there any manner to clear swimmers from a piece of water faster than to scream "shark".

People have an irrational fear of sharks (likely because of movies like Jaws). But they do not fear mosquitoes (which kill between one to three million people a year globally through the spread of various diseases), mans best friend (dogs kill 25,000 people a year) or the dreaded freshwater snail (that kills about 10,000 a year by passing a parasite).

Why is that?

Well for the same reason we don't shut down the country to avoid the flu, outlaw cigarettes to avoid heart and lung disease, or make the speed limit 20 mph to save lives. Because they are somehow known and accepted risks that people are willing to take in the name of personal freedom. Imagine if some summer, our State governors declared that nobody could be outside, due to a particularly dangerous disease being carried by mosquitoes?  How do you supposed that would go over?

So I find it ironic that this particular person decides to compare the irrational fear of Covid-19 with quite possibly the most irrational fear of any of the creatures of the animal kingdom (sharks). It seems terribly fitting as well as a terrible argument.