Every day: There is a 1 in 1 trillion chance that a gamma ray burst from a celestial event will kill every living thing on earth.
There is a 1 in a billion chance that an asteroid will kill 9/10 of humanity.
There is a 1 in 10,000 chance you'll die in car accident this year. - 100% chance that *multiple people* will die in a car accident today.
There have been 21,000 flu deaths this year.
There have been 2,800 cases of coronavirus.
Perspective.
Put another way: more than three times as many people have died of the flu JUST IN THE US, JUST SO FAR THIS YEAR, as have been simply diagnosed with Wuhan coronavirus.
I've never been able to figure out how the people who panic about stuff like this manage to navigate REAL threats to life and limb, like staircases and showers.
@mcfate - Humans have a very good innate sense of risk management. Innate is the key word. Just like most adults know applied physics, like where a ball will land, and how hard to throw a ball to get it to land in a certain place, but couldn't even begin to do the math behind it. We understand applied risk, but can't explain why X is riskier than Y at Z time.
@mcfate - yes.
But that extinction point is way far off.
Oh, well, good. So if life is horrible for my grandkids down the pike, thanks to the short-sightedness of people today, at least I won't have to watch it happen.
Sigh.
It's people's "very good innate sense of risk management" β on a PERSONAL level β that creates a good portion of the problems we see on a SOCIETAL level.
Just sayin'.