Among the many lessons that we are sadly learning during the pandemic, America's innumeracy is certainly one of them.
Right now, there are people quitting their jobs over vaccine mandates. We see them on the media. Dozens of police and firefighters publicly quitting over the requirement to get a vaccine against a disease that is the leading cause of death among the police. The reality is that most places that require a vaccine see 90% compliance.
Jon Oliver did a bit on climate change deniers with Bill Nye, where they challenged the usual talk show format of one climate scientist and one climate skeptic. This implies a balance between the two. As Nye pointed out, you would need 3 climate deniers and 97 climate scientists to accurately depict the scientific consensus.
We see similar things with groups like "American Frontline Nurses" referenced here. Apparently there are only three of these lunatics. Now, there are a surprising number of nurses who are anti-vax, but the number is nowhere near 50%. Anti-vaxxers in the medical establishment exist, but they are rare.
We see a similar situation where people think a 95% effective vaccine means it's impossible to get Covid. No, it means you have a 1 in 20 chance of getting it. If some of the data on Delta is true, that number might be closer to 1 in 10. It does mean that if you're vaccinated, you're much, much less likely to die.
Yglesias takes this on when he asks why we continue to do "Covid theater" like surface disinfecting, when we know Covid doesn't really transmit via surface transmission. You could expand this to asking we still have to take off our damned shoes at the airport.
So much of our inability to do accurate risk assessment depends on a simple misunderstanding of how numbers work and what they actually say.
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