Miscalculating Risk: Confusing Scary With Dangerous | RealClearPolitics

Miscalculating Risk: Confusing Scary With Dangerous | RealClearPolitics
"The coronavirus kills...But is it the most dangerous?
Or even close?
There are four ways to categorize any given reality. 
It can be scary but not dangerous, scary and dangerous, dangerous but not scary, or not dangerous and not scary.
...To date, the virus has tragically killed nearly 100,000 people in the United States...
But on a scale of harmless to extremely dangerous, it would still fall into the category of slightly to mildly dangerous for most people, excluding the elderly and those with preexisting medical conditions.
In comparison, many have no idea that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, killing around 650,000 people every year, 54,000 per month...
This qualifies as extremely dangerous.
...It’s critical to be able to distinguish between fear and danger. 
Fear is an emotion, it’s the risk that we perceive.
As an emotion, it is often blind to the facts.
...Imagine if an insurance actuary was so scared of something that she graded it 1,000 times riskier than the data showed. 
This might be a career-ending mistake.
This is exactly what people have done regarding COVID-19: making decisions on fear and not data...
Read all.