To wonder why people can't evaluate risk?

[2155User]

Seeing so many posts of people asking opinions on whether they should go on holiday/go away and a huge proportion of responses are "it's too risky" "don't go something might happen" etc

Yet the chances of catching the virus are pretty similar near identical to the chances of dying in a car crash/dying from falling over etc.

So AIBU in thinking people have totally lost the ability the evaluate the risk out there?

Obviously it'll differ if you have medical conditions that make you at higher risk of catching the virus, and quite clearly a holiday is a 'choice'/luxury but still, people just seem scared

Have you read Thinking, Fast and Slow? People have never been good at evaluating risk. It's in our neural make up. Essentially, it's quite useful when being eyed up by a sabre toothed tiger. Less so when deciding whether it's safe to go on holiday or make an investment decision. The COVID situation has thrown this into stark relief.

Not just make a decision but take action, but then this is a chat forum and I guess most people just want help to think it through.

I do wonder if actually most people do know what they think and want to do but need reassurance or write with faux niceness rather than say "this is what I think and this is what I'm going to do" in fear of rejection or being accused of being accused of being aggressive or decisive which are not generally considered to be female traits.

Yeah, but even as a fully paid up Anti Dementor is still be concerned about the risk of local lockdowns especially in places like Spain.

It’s the governments of the destinations mentioned complete intolerance of risk i would struggle with.

It's not just the risk of catching Covid though is it? There's also the risk of disruption, risk of lockdown (especially in Spain right now) and the risks of insurance not covering anything Covid related.

I think COVID has massively impacted people's ability to judge risk. And that's not surprising, given that the government essentially told people it was too dangerous to go outside for 12 weeks (not saying this was the wrong thing, just that it has obviously impacted people's perception of risk).

Up to a point I have some sympathy with this and particularly when people are shielding etc. But I do think people have become irrational about it. The recent post on this topic about the woman who's entire family are still on lockdown now really brought that home -- it brought out loads of other comments from people who seem to want to stay locked down in perpetuity and are planning to keep their kids off school indefinitely etc.

I don't blame people for feeling like this but by any objective measure if you're in the UK now and unless you're shielding, this is a very irrational approach.

There’s a big difference between not taking your children out of the house for six months and not wanting to go on holiday abroad right now.

I can’t travel out of my country right now even if I wanted to.

I agree op. There are schools out these who are going to isolate a child behind a closed door if they have a cough or temperature with an adult if ‘deemed appropriate’. Let’s weigh up the risks. There are 1/3900 people with CV (probably a lot less now we know pHE Have been ‘creative’ with their stats.) the chance of catching it is 1/40 and nearly all people of working age will have ‘flu like symptoms.
Is it worth abandoning safeguarding for something that is no longer a pandemic?
Yes, I know there maybe adults and children who are more at risk, but our lives have never been risk free, there are lots of unpleasant viruses but we didn’t abandoned safeguarding for them.
Before I am shouted down, the conversations really do need to start happening otherwise we could be living like this for a very long time.

[places bet on how long it will take before @thepeopleversuswork gets absolutely flamed by the usual suspects]

Hmm. For someone who’s having a go at others for lack of understanding of risk, I’m not convinced you’ve got a handle on the stats yourself.

Would you care to show your workings behind your confident assertion that “the chances of catching the virus are pretty similar near identical to the chances of dying in a car crash/dying from falling over etc.” Back of the envelope rough calculations will do. Then you can compare them with my rough workings which show something quite different.

And when you say “it'll differ if you have medical conditions that make you at higher risk of catching the virus,” I’m unaware that any medical conditions make you at higher risk of catching the virus. Do you mean conditions that require regular trips into hospital?

You’re not wrong to think there’s a lot of sloppy reasoning going around, but it’s definitely not confined to the paranoid side of the fence, and if you’re going to criticise others for lack of rigour you should be a bit more scrupulous yourself.

@MsWarrensProfession
these stats came from ONS

"Yet the chances of catching the virus are pretty similar near identical to the chances of dying in a car crash/dying from falling over etc."

Sorry but that's a load of bollox. If that's the case I'm astounded by the numbers you think are dying in car crashes!!! Nearly 50,000 so far!!! 700 odd people caught the virus yesterday...in one day!!! Keep an eye on the numbers and dont believe the crap people about the level of risk and car crashes. Daily numberscwent down from 1000 a day to about 400 a day, this last week theyve been creeping up again.

And no, medical conditions dont make you more likely to catch it....they make it more likely you will get severly ill.

People know that the chance of getting cancer is 1 in 3, they think it won't be them. People know the chance of winning the lottery is 1 in 14 million, they think it will be them.

You do unconscious risk assessments every day - you leave your baby in the trolley to grab something from the other end of the supermarket aisle but you take your bag. Your baby is more precious to you but you've done the risk assessment that someone is more likely to take your bag.

I know what you mean OP. The whole crisis has made me realise that people aren’t great at assessing risk. But tbh I include myself in that! It’s really quite a difficult thing to do, particularly in the west where we actually don’t face that many risks on a daily basis.

I find I am a lot more frightened of risks that are fairly remote than ones that are far more likely. So for example I am really terrified of my son being abducted by a stranger. Far more terrified than I am of being involved in a car accident with him in the car. But which one is (far) more statistically likely? I’m being totally irrational, surely?

I think what people struggle with the most is when there’s a high risk of something happening but a low risk of it having a serious outcome, and that’s what Covid is. There was (pre lockdown) a reasonably high risk of catching it, but assuming you’re under 60 and basically healthy, the risk of getting seriously ill from it is quite low. Not absent, but quite low. And I think that’s harder to process than a low risk of something happening with a high risk of a serious outcome - like meningitis for example.

The good news is that your chance of getting cancer is now 1 in 2 UncleShady, which is a fantastic tribute to the work done on heart disease.

Whilst I am low risk for developing serious complications if I caught SARS-coV-2, I have cancelled 3 overseas holidays because I believe that we need to reduce international flights/travel, to an absolute minimum until the pandemic is under control globally.

This isn’t because I have some huge fear on a personal level, but because I believe that we all need to put our selfish instincts aside and think about the bigger picture.

I can go away again next year - I hope.

A second opinion is never a bad idea when evaluating risk.

People still take precautions to avoid car crashes - wearing seatbelts, not drinking and driving, sticking to speed limits and following the rules of the road.

It’s not all about avoiding death anyway, people want to avoid catching it and passing it on, as someone more vulnerable may die along the line.

Having underlying conditions doesn’t put you at increased risk of catching Covid, it increases your risk of becoming more unwell should you get it. Also, this is not “just like the flu” where people are all making a full recovery. There is the risk of long term health issues as a result of having had this - drs are reporting long term damage to lungs and kidneys.
Then there’s the risk of going abroad and the guidance changing while you’re there. Then the risk of one of us developing symptoms while we’re abroad, not being able to fly home in time to return to work- in this situation my employers have said we would not be paid until our isolation is up and we return to work.

While the chances of some of the events I mentioned may be relatively small, it’s a matter of whether the possible outcome is worth taking that small risk. It’s more the possible severity of the outcome than the chances of it happening that’s relevant here.

As mentioned by PP, we're not good at it because we have not had long enough as modern humans to develop the ability to do so. We're also really terrible at maths (at a population level); very divorced from nature, illness and death; and I think really desperate for a sense of purpose and drama. Modern life is very very safe but again, we have not had time to adapt so we have a tendency as a species to catastrophise, partly because we have the time to do so (at a species, not individual, level).
We are not yet well-adapted to modern life and Covid seems to have created a perfect storm of mass anxiety, which is understandable but very frustrating.

But assessing risk isn't just working out the odds of it happening to you, but also how severe the outcome could be for you.

We have a lack of long term data on Covid, and increasing reports of new and more long term effects. So other people have evaluated this risk just as you have, only they have decided the risk is too great for them to undertake a particular action. Only time will tell if they are wrongly evaluating the risk, or if you are

Because it appears the majority of people have no ability or are too lazy to use available information to reach a conclusion. Plus if they get someone else to make the decision it’s someone else’s fault if things go wrong.

It basically boils down to lack of individual responsibility.

My risk assessment tells me I have far more chance of developing cancer than dying of Covid and, left to my own devices, I’d be living a pretty normal life now. However, I’m married to someone who has about five high risk factors so I’m taking precautions that would be unnecessary for me to mitigate the risk to him.

I think it will be very interesting to see how history views this down the line.

Yes, it is actually quite fascinating.

The schools one is the most interesting, I think. I know a lot of people who don't want to send their children back to school or nursery. Yet statistically their children are more likely to die from an accident in the home than from coronavirus. It doesn't make a lot of sense but perhaps people feel they have more control over the risk if it is in their own home?

A PP pointed out that 50,000 people a year have not died in car accidents, but this doesn't mean the risk of coronavirus is automatically higher than dying in a car accident. It is higher for certain sections of the population, but not for a healthy young person.

Also depends how much you value the good outcome you'd get in the ideal scenario where the (possibly small) risk doesn't materialise.

I'm not overly fussed about going away on holiday, for example, certainly not with the sort of faff and restrictions that currently exist - more than I'm actually fearful that anything bad would happen if I did. So the desire isn't enough to tip the scales for me.

Part of it is because we don't take maths/stats seriously - we have the view that maths, stats, science are important only for those aiming at a scientific career, and it doesn't matter if other people understand stats or take it seriously. And yet every day we make decisions by balancing different probabilities in our minds.

It isn't just a out children getting it though, it is about them passing it on to older family members
By far the biggest risk factor for death with Covid19 is age. For adults it increases tenfold for about a 20 year increase in age. If you just do risk calculations without taking this into account you don't get an accurate picture
So, a 40 year old has 10x the chance of a 20 year old of dying and a 60 year old has 100x the chance.