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

But it's not just about risk is it. This isn't fully thought through but the equation for 'should you do something' would be along the lines of:

Risk x necessity x precautions x how will you feel if the worst happens

So having no option but to drive your DC to school means you do it every day.

Going on holiday which isn't necessary and for which you can't isolate yourself from 200 other potentially germ spreading people on a plane will elicit quite a different response.

I've been saying this all along. People are so bad at risk comparisons that they've ruined the world as we knew it, and are pretty much abusing their children to keep them 'safe'.

To me obviously if someone in my family died of coronavirus that would be horrific. But I'm also scared of the risk of just getting it because it's not just like flu for a lot of people. You dont know what turn it's going to take and what any lasting problems might be. Covid causes blood clots, lot of them. Young and old can have significant problems from that. Even people who have had it have taken months to feel right again.

I'm still mostly staying home, I'm not in fear of catching it myself but simply because the more people who are out and about the more people who could be infected by someone asymptomatic and I don't want it getting out of control again. I'm not however hiding at home in fear and if I have reason to go out I do so. My child is going back to school first chance they get.

Just to answer a few points:

Sorry, I didn't word one of my initial sentences good at all! I meant if you have underlying conditions/medical problems then covid is more likely to cause 'issues' for you and therefore I understand why someone with say severe asthma is more likely to stay at home/not go abroad.

As for the statistics, when I googled it said who states the risk is just over 1/100, pretty similar to the odds when googled I found of dying in a car crash etc. Obviously all websites and articles give a slightly differing figure, but they cannot be too out.

I think some posters are right in that the government has made it quite confusing at times and therefore people are more cautious and would rather errrr on the side of caution than take the risk.

Additionally, finances play a part as if you have more money you are more likely to take the risk of booking a holiday knowing you might not go but still lose the money.

Think I'll purchase that book first mentioned, sounds really interesting!

You've all given me a lot of food for thought so thank you

I've been very relaxed about the whole thing, followed the rules but not worried about them. I'm not ready to go abroad though, primarily because of the risk of being getting stuck somewhere if there's a local outbreak or if someone names me as a contact, not because I think I personally am in any great danger. Plus I don't want to go abroad enough to take the risk that the holiday could be spoiled by restrictions

It is a hard one and we are always more affected by something we have heard about in the media than by the daily risks we face that are so common they are not newsworthy.

However the stats you are using are skewed by the effects of lockdown and the effects of some people going overboard and still staying in.

I'm in Mexico City where the pandemia is still quite severe. Yesterday I took public transport for the first time and it was totally safe but that is because very, very few people are using public transport at the moment.

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

The trouble with that is that poor people, here in Mexico City, have had to battle with so many disasters that some of them just didn't take covid seriously at all, apart from it being harder to isolate in cramped living conditions and having to earn their daily bread.

I guess people are seeing that, worldwide, coronavirus transmission is still increasing. Sounds like a good enough reason to stay here to me. Mainly because I take long enough to research possible holiday destinations at the best of times, without having to factor in looking at virus transmission anywhere I would like to travel to as well.

The 1/100 - over what time period?
If you have one in one hundred chance of dying if you catch it that's really quite high, compared to say, a one in one hundred chance of dying in a car crash over the course of a lifetime?

In principle I agree. The attitude generally seems to be that any risk is bad and people will take precautions to remove the risk of certain things happening while overlooking more immediate risks. However I do think this is different. As a pp says if I say going abroad isn't worth the risk, what I mean is the very real risk of disruption, annoyance and just generally not having fun.

@EducatingArti

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.

More people died in the UK of Alzheimer’s or dementia than Covid last month. By definition, those were all in the older age groups. We’re really over egging the risks now. Incidentally, that’s based on ONS figures, we now know the PHE stats are wildly inaccurate.

Coronavirus is a tricky one, because the risk can change massively over a fairly small period of time. No-one is able to confidently predict what the risk will be in November, for example (or at least any confidence would be misplaced). There is also risk attached to how willing companies will be to give refunds in situations which are less than clear cut. For example, if between your booking the holiday and going on it, the government imposes a quarantine period for that location but your employer states that unauthorised absence due to quarantine is unacceptable, will your holiday company then refund the money?

I agree to a certain extent about risk assessment. I was certainly very happy to send DD back to nursery and don't worry about anyone in our household catching covid as we're all pretty low risk. But I wouldn't go on a holiday abroad right now because:

A) I think as a society we should still be aiming to keep transition low for the sake of vulnerable people and the health service.

B) The risk of personally catching covid wouldn't worry me, but the risk of getting stuck somewhere locked down wouldn't appeal. At least if I stay here I can return to my own house and garden if restrictions increase again.

Sorry, I'm not sure about the timescales in relation to the risk.

This has definitely help me understand that it isn't just about the risk of catching the virus, but also the risk of arriving on holiday and there not being the usual attractions open/so much being different that it doesn't feel like a holiday.

I am also realising that I possibly have a skewed view in that I have no been negatively affected in any way by the virus, in fact I would go as far as saying it has positively impacted me, and so I am beginning to appreciate that I may have a totally different view on risk if a family member had caught/had died of the virus

@nellodee

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

All other risks are 'steady' whereas, and I certainly don't think the government has helped perception at times, the risk of catching the virus seem to change so much from week to week that people feel as if they don't really know what's going to happen

For a holiday... currently too risky for me

biggest "risk" is the ever changing nature of individual governments' responses.

Would we have to isolate when returning if the rules suddenly changed? Another 14 days off work...

Would we have to quarantine when we got there if the rate suddenly went up in that country (14 days off our holiday).

Would we be able to get home if the country (ours or theirs went into sudden lockdown?

Would insurance cover any of the above. How about if the advice is CURRENTLY no travel and you book a trip in hopeful anticipation?

(yes I am a catastrophiser - having been caught with the ash cloud and hurricane Irma - we are not lucky travellers)

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.

Surely the risk of catching covid isn’t static. The risk of death or long term disability if you catch it might be static, but the risk of catching covid depends on the prevalence of covid in your area.

There's also a huge difference between individual risk and population risk. If everyone did something that has a 1 in a million chance of happening then the individual chance of it happening to any one person is very small* but it will happen to 67 people, and if that has knock on effects (like starting 67 new disease transmission chains that could each infect thousands through exponential growth) then that can be a big problem for the country as a whole. And of course exponential growth itself is something we struggle to understand as well.

*unless you're a Terry Pratchett fan of course

1 in 100 is roughly your chance of dying in a road accident in your lifetime and if you are an American (and no it’s not much the same if you’re in the UK).

It’s really not a useful comparison, and if you don’t understand what the numbers are that you’re throwing around then you have no place insulting other people’s risk analyses.

A more useful comparison is that your risk of dying of COVID if you contract it is pretty much the same as your chances would be of dying in the next year from natural causes. From one point of view that’s quite reassuring because most people don’t go about in serious fear that they’ll not live to see their their next birthday - even if they have asthma or diabetes or are moderately obese. But from another POV it’s doubled your chances of death this year, and that can feel quite scary.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

Yes, I agree, and I'm beginning to understand that is what is causing a lot of 'fear' so to speak...the unknown and not knowing what will be the statistic next week, and therefore maybe I should stop looking at it so black and white

@MsWarrensProfession

I do still believe some people have a worryingly skewed risk assessment, and do genuinely feel that if they step on a plane then it's more than like they will catch the virus and die, when that simply isn't true.

But yes, I do appreciate that it can look scary if looked at in a particular way, and the mindset that you take or generally have will change the way you view the risk. (Half empty/half full so to speak)

The UK risk of dying in a road accident is 0.4% in a whole lifetime.

@EducatingArti

Thanks for that. Like I've previously said, different websites will show slightly different statistics, but the main point of this was to understand more about how people have got the general evaluation of risk badly wrong in some circumstances.

We've had/are having risk evaluation bred out of us as a species

@Chanjer

I've never considered this before, but I'm starting to think you're right and will definitely do more reading into that idea as it fascinates me

I agree that people often don't understand risk.
The lifetime risk of dying in a road accident is 0.4% which equates to 0.005% annually. If the current ( annual risk?) of dying from Covid19 is 1% then you are 200 times more likely to die of Covid19 than a road accident in the next year.
1% is a big risk. It means 1 out of every 100 people die!
That is a lot of people! It is right to be cautious.

@EducatingArti

I absolutely think people should be cautious, and it is a lot of people dying, but some people really do have the mindset of "mustn't ever leave the house" "will die if I go near someone" and I'm seeing an increasing number of posts of MN where people just lack an absolute ability to evaluate risk.

I'm not by any means saying there is no risk, but it appears that quite a few people think covid is the biggest risk in life right now, when it quite simply isn't.