This post challenges the idea that individuals can fully understand and manage their own risk without proper information, highlighting the dangers of incomplete knowledge in pandemic decision-making.
We often hear the risk of death or disability associated with COVID described as being “low” or “high.” Confusingly, different people can respond to the same number with very different qualifiers. Just how risky is COVID compared to other risks in our lives? We dig into that in this article.
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Statistically, you can expect to run with the bulls 18 times before your cumulative risk of injury exceeds 50%. Beyond that point, the odds begin to stack against you. It takes 77 excursions before you can be 95% confident that you will get injured.
For such a seemingly dangerous sport, those numbers aren’t that bad. The per-infection chance of developing symptomatic Long COVID is 14.6% according to Statistics Canada. With these numbers, you can get infected with SARS-Cov-2 4 times before your risk of Long COVID approaches a 50/50 chance. After 19 infections, your cumulative risk approaches near certainty at 95%.
We would rather run with the bulls.