Bill Miller on risk, real and perceived

The problem is that real risk and perceived risk are two different things.  And that's where people get into trouble, because they perceive risk to be high when prices are low, and they perceive risk to be low when prices are high.

~ Bill Miller

Michael Brendon Dougherty on how Covid-19 warped assessments of risk

At some point, the pandemic — the provisional and practical judgments in favor of caution that can justify restrictive behaviors — became an unshakeable moral purpose.  Actual weighing of risks went out the window: There’s a deadly disease out there; my actions can contribute to the end of the disease or to its spreading in perpetuity. 

It’s as if a circuit has been fused.  While caution and restrictive behavior can be justified by a conscience informed by the risks, the human mind can also make calculations based on superstition.  And one frighteningly common one is the equation of science with truth, fear with realism, and caution with virtue.

~ Michael Brendon Dougherty, "COVID-19 Rewired Our Brains," National Review, May 3, 2021

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky speaks before the
House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis,
April 15, 2021

Rolf Dobelli on how news media distorts risk assessement

As a result of news, we walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads.

• Terrorism is overrated.  Chronic stress is underrated.
• The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated.  Fiscal irresponsibility is underrated.
• Astronauts are overrated.  Nurses are underrated.
• Britney Spears is overrated.  IPCC reports are underrated.
• Airplane crashes are overrated.  Resistance to antibiotics is underrated.

We are not rational enough to be exposed to the news-mongering press.  It is a very dangerous thing, because the probabilistic mapping we get from consuming news is entirely different from the actual risks that we face.  Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk regardless of its real probability, no matter your intellectual sophistication.  If you think you can compensate for this bias with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you are wrong.

~ Rolf Dobelli, "Avoid News," p. 2, 2010

Kevin Duffy compares Covid-19 to other fatality risks

Thanks in part to all of the confusion (fake news, politicized science), most people have overestimated the risk of death from the coronavirus. If you're under the age of 50, your chances of dying from the coronavirus if infected are less than 1 in 5,000. Assuming you have a 20% chance of getting infected over your lifetime, the odds of dying are 1 in 25,000. And this assumes our ability to treat this disease doesn't  improve and herd immunity won't reduce the risk of infection. 

How does Covid compare to other fatality risks over a lifetime? 

heart disease = 1 in 6 

cancer = 1 in 7

drug overdose = 1 in 98

car accident = 1 in 106

choking on food = 1 in 2,618

sunstroke = 1 in 7,770

bee sting = 1 in 54,000

dog attack = 1 in 119,000

lightning = 1 in 181,000

plane crash = 1 in 250,000?

Despite these risks, we still drive, fly, own pets, go outside and put unhealthy things into our bodies.

~ Kevin Duffy

Clay Travis on the risks of Covid-19 for college students

What we have in this country is a huge collection of pussy willows: people who don't understand how to assess risk.  Here's an easy assessment: College kids are more likely to die of the seasonal flu than they are of the coronavirus.  Yet we never shut down college campuses for the flu.  They are more likely to die driving in cars to their campuses.  They are more likely to be murdered.  They are more likely to die of a drug overdose.  They are more likely to die from drinking too much alcohol.  They are more likely to die from suicide.  All of those are bigger risk factors for college kids than the coronavirus is.

This represents a monumental failure of American society.  I believe, ultimately, this is going to be looked back on by people with functional brains as the worst decision of American policy since the Vietnam War.

~ Clay Travis, "Mark Cuban is ANGRY about NBA ratings, spring football IDIOCY, MLS booing, MLB silence," YouTube, 5:45 mark, August 13, 2020

Jim Grant on how not to deal with the coronavirus

I was on CNBC a while ago... and somebody said, there’s no trade-off between health and commerce. Of course there is. We suffer, collectively, 40,000 deaths a year on the highways. We could reduce that substantially by posting a 20 mile an hour speed limit. We don’t do that, not because we’re callous but because we live our lives. We take chances. You get up in the morning, you’re taking a chance.

I speak, as few talking heads do speak, with certifiably no epidemiological knowledge at all. I skipped that course entirely. So I don’t pretend to speak from anything more than newspaper reading prejudice on this matter. But I think that the go-hide-in-a-hole approach is probably not well advised.

~ Jim Grant, "Nobody Knows Anything," interview with Albert Lu of Sprott Media, March 24, 2020