Maybe high school should include lessons in estimating...
by Kbyrnes (2021-08-02 13:04:59)
Edited on 2021-08-02 13:06:06

In reply to: Re: the increase in Covid and reinstated distancing/masks  posted by mocopdx

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...risk in alternative situations, something financial people model for clients all the time, but an idea that seems all too gut-level/hunch-involved among the general public.

Example: I place a "cost" of 100 units on getting a delta headache. The odds of getting it might be 50%--just my guesstimate in this hypothetical. So the expected value is 50 units of cost.

I place a "cost" of 100,000 units on being hospitalized with COVID. I mean, isn't that like a thousand times worse than a headache? The positivity rate among unvaccinated people in my area, say, is 5%. Would I be hospitalized if infected as an unvaccinated person? Who knows. Maybe a 5% chance of that. The expected value of this scenario is 100,000 x 5% x 5% = 250. Call it a 2% chance--now the cost is 100, still higher than the headache cost. You'd have to be confident that even if you contracted Covid, you'd have less than 1 chance in a hundred of needing to be hospitalized. Remember that scene in Dirty Harry where Harry asks, "Do ya feel lucky?" Get the shot.

Now, the inputs can make a big difference, but my point is that people don't even get close to approaching it this way. It doesn't even have to be quantified, just dichotomized--"What would you fear more, a headache from the shot or getting a breathing tube at the hospital?"

I think the plethora of scare stories might be having an effect, since they are implicitly advancing the dichotomy. They are true stories, but clearly publicized in order to have an effect on the unvaccinated akin to the intended effect of the bloody car-crash movies and slides shown to us as teens and 20-somethings back in the day (in lieu of a ticket, or to get a ticket expunged from your record).

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