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Backlog reading continues!

Pointing out the risk of Covid was below drowning for drowning has cost me a few friends (and booted from some data analysis groups), I'll bookmark this and use your words instead of mine next time :)

While it is troubling that a physician like Jeremy Faust is risk illiterate, it isn't that surprising - it's been a known issue in healthcare, Gerd Gigerenzer writes extensively on this topic [1]. What was more surprising to me the last 2 years wasn't that physicians are innumerate (being married to a surgeon, I understand how the training can focus at times more on the mechanics than analysis), but that epidemiologists are, apparently, risk illiterate as well - which is baffling.

It could be that only a very small minority of epidemiologists are innumerate, and that lack of risk analysis leads them to produce sensationalist ideas, which in turn are more attractive to the algorithms and hysteria of social media, so they overrepresent the profession. It could be. But I'm just disappointed anyway.

I'm looking at the date of this well written piece you put out, which should be in my opinion "viral", but instead I hadn't seen it until digging through your archives, because viral pieces were going around scaring people that "omicron was the 4th leading cause of death for 5-24 year olds". More seductive to scare people I suppose. [2]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Better-Doctors-Patients-Decisions-Envisioning/dp/0262016036/ref=sr_1

[2] https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/pediatric-state-of-affairs-april/comment/6293222?s=r

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I've got kids, so I understand the emotional reaction. I know about the danger of pools, and a couple of times, I've forced my kids to leave a pool bc I was not happy with the safety of the situation.

That said, I also know the risk is still fairly small.

While I've been appalled at the public health communications the past couple years, given the reactions I've had to extremely simple stats I've talked about, that have existed before and during the pandemic, the issue is that the sane people generally do not want to deal with the hysterical people. Most actuaries are not out there with this stuff because, frankly, they would rather do more complicated things for money. They don't need the hassle.

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I've got kids too (12 and 7), AND we bought a house with a pool, knowing the risks six years ago (as you say, "Pools are fun"). It's a risk that can be weighed. As you noted, people aren't demanding we close beaches, cement over all residential pools, and force lifejackets to be worn all the time , despite comparable risks. People don't tend to respond well to other comparisons I have tried to give to alleviate (what I see as) unnecessary anxiety - comparing risk to Septicemia (which they never heard of typically) or flu doesn't go over well either. Very strange.

It shouldn't take actuaries to deal with the hysterical people, it should be the public health professionals putting the hysteria in context. Instead they flame it. Such a strange outcome.

Again, as you noted, this was before the pandemic too - saw similar hysterics on Zika, MERSs, H1N1, etc - probably the difference is we didn't have fully vested Social Media platforms to spread bad ideas as rapidly. Seems a lot of these hysterical voices only have a voice through Twitter, Facebook, etc, options they didn't have to spread their message as efficiently 10 years ago.

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