Risk and probabilty

Put things in perspective. Your odds of:

- being dealt a royal flush: 1 in 649,739

- dying in a car accident are 1 in 106

- dying from the flu: 1 in 6,500

- dying from COVID-19: 1 in 2,321

- dying from a heart attack: 1 in 4

- dying from a lightning strike: 1 in 1,200,000

- dying after being attacked by a dog: 1 in 118,776

- dying from a shark attack: 1 in 3,750,000

- a heterosexual man dying from HIV: 1 in 2,500

- a heterosexual woman dying from HIV: 1 in 1,250

People are very poor estimators of risk and probability. Watch people try to estimate probability. Ask them what the odds of this are:

Suppose you flip a coin 99 times in a row and each time it comes up heads. Now what are the chances that the 100th time you flip it, it will be heads again?

If they try to tell you that tails is "due" then they don't understand math or probability well enough to discuss the subject.

That is why, nearly 50 years after the start of the HIV epidemic, many people still do not practice safe sex. Many still get in a car, or even eat unhealthy food. Yet they freak out when they see someone without a mask on, even though there is not one single study that shows masks worn by the public prevent the community transmission of COVID-19.

In the meantime, the "experts" tell us that COVID likely doesn't spread as an aerosol.