Second Covid lockdown due to information cascade
According to the article, the secondary wave of covid-19 may not be the public’s fault. In the article they state that people more or less followed government guidelines pretty well. However, some people began to ignore the warnings and went to the beach or participated in the BLM protests worldwide. Although against guidelines, citizens deemed it important enough to participate regardless, as did some police members. With this confliction of information on adhering to guidelines, and with other information coming in, people did not know what to listen to. What ended up happening is people began to listen to what their neighbors and friends were doing, and when nothing happened to them, they began to listen. As with the minority that went out regardless of guidelines, those that were not affected by covid led people to the belief that it was not as serious as what the government had led them to believe. By following what was essentially their own network of information, people gradually began to go out and take risks more and more as the months went on. This led to the second wave of covid going around the country.
This article relates to class as what was described in the article was an effective information cascade. This occured as the government did not hold up their own regulations enough and people began to listen to that minority that went out, and then were not affected. From this information cascade of those choosing to go out and be more at risk, and then being fine, people began to go out more and more to the detriment of those that could be more negatively affected. As with more and more people going out and enjoying themselves, even though being more at risk, they followed suit as they then perceived covid to not be that big an issue. With this information cascade and people going out more and more, it’s only natural that we are now experiencing a second wave of covid as those going out are spreading the virus and becoming carriers. The article states that it is not their fault as the minority that chose to go out were not reprimanded or faced any consequences so the public followed suit with the information they received was from those in which no complications occurred despite the virus still being out there. As such, we are now experiencing a second wave of covid as now it is more regular and acceptable to go out, from the information cascade of their network, despite the effects of covid, leading to the second wave of covid we are experiencing now.