We don't let facts get in the way of a good (fearful) story

One reason to read widely is to encounter ideas you would never have thought of on your own, and today's example is from the New York Times Morning Report. It gets into irrational fears and our tendency to not be very good at risk assessment.

The shorthand version of much study and research is that humans come to accept risks that have "always" been around them. A basic example is the 40,000 traffic deaths that occur in the U.S. each year. That is a big number and dwarfs the recent news about six women afflicted by blood clotting... which may or not not be caused by a reaction to the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. 

One point of the research is that most of us do not panic when we hear about the trade-off between the convenience and freedom of driving our cars and the rather regular reality of people being injured and dying in car accidents. 

The research on whether there is clear cause and effect in the case of the J&J vaccine (and cause and effect arguments are often the basis for our persuasive essays) is still ongoing. At this point, the statistic to ponder is that the odds are either about one in a million (dividing six by the seven million doses given) or one in several hundred thousand (if you include only women ages 18-50 in the denominator). Either way, the odds are quite good for those taking the vaccine. 

Humans have an irrational hope of being 100 percent safe, no matter the task or situation, but to carry on with life we eventually settle for "acceptable" risk, since there is always some chance of something bad happening. 

The odds are pretty decent that I will not be in a traffic accident today when I venture out for some delayed shopping. The odds are really good that I will not be in a fatal accident. I guess I "know" that something bad might happen -- and perhaps that knowledge motivates me to not drive too fast or take chances on the road -- but I don't spend time saying a prayer to St. Christopher before turning the key on the old RAV4. 

After all, I have lived with this risk my whole life. As the research shows, I can't really imagine life without this risk.

But Covid-19 vaccines are a new risk, just introduced into our lives, and many of us simply have not had time to incorporate this new risk into our thinking. 

It turns out that the facts -- the odds -- often are not enough to overcome our irrational fears. That seems like an important truth for writers constructing arguments that advocate for change.