I'm talking about much smaller things than that. For example, overestimating the chances of harm from an MMR vaccine vs. underestimating the harm from texting while driving. Or never letting your kids go to the park by themselves vs. virtually unfettered access to digital devices. There's a whole mixed up world perceived vs. real harms. Maybe KB is correct that we've always been bad at risk assessment, but my sense is that the way in which were bad at his has morphed into something that looks like the tragedy of the commons on steroids.

Certainly in that environment it's a lot easier for bad actors to exploit people's fears for whatever gain they get out of it. But also a lot of leadership in this country has scored some nasty own goals since the pandemic that are inexcusable. There's a good line in a thing I posted this morning about suicides in the army where a soldier says how fucked up it is that the army preaches sacrificing the individual for the collective but then still fails the collective. I'm not into making predictions, but one I'm fairly certain of is that we're going to continue to experience a leadership gap for at least another 4 years and change.