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The pictures were impossible to ignore. It was a beautiful weekend in Vancouver. The sun was out. The air smelled like water and trees. And the young, as the young do, were taking full advantage. Even with the world on lockdown, they were out in droves, on the beaches, in backyards. One group was spotted partying on a rooftop, playing beer pong and eating from a communal grill. It was as if they all stopped listening after “social” and missed the part about “distancing.”

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They’ve been dubbed “COVIDIOTS,” the people, many of them young, many of them young men, too self-absorbed, too ill-informed or too thick-headed to believe that social distancing, self isolation and pleas to stay at home apply to them too. They’ve made an easy punching bag. In a time of global panic, fear goes down a little easier when it’s leavened with a bit of hate.

But experts in communication and human behaviour believe it’s a little more complicated than that. This isn’t just selfish dummies being dumb, they say. (Though there is some of that.) Humans have a hard time taking collective risk seriously. “We are wired by evolution to respond to immediate threats,” said Robert Gifford, a professor of psychology and environmental studies at the University of Victoria. In a collective risk scenario like this one, those threats need to be communicated clearly, simply and without confusion for the public to buy in. And far too often, when it has come to COVID-19, that hasn’t happened.