Did I mention those Asians also wear helmets? Motorcycle helmets, but still… And they flash the V sign without having won a war first.

Whether or not these military operations should have been done, or not, or in different ways, should basically be unrelated to such calculations. unfortunately, the threat can be and has been overblown because those are the kinds of arguments that sway the public, and similarly opponents throw up stuff about how car crashes will kill more people in a red herring approach to arguing against military action.

My only point is that in the context of personal risk assessment, the chance of getting killed by terrorism in North America as something to be afraid of, has never been all that likely compared with other risks everyday. Still true even when the dead of 9/11 are counted. Doesn’t make any point about what America’s responses should have been then or since. It does make a point about what one should really fear on an everyday basis and how much, and it isn’t terrorism.

Even infectious disease normally not so much. But our culture has been underplaying that one for a long time rather than overplaying it.

Like a helmet, a bulletproof vest, our shoes, clothes, a wall, a door in your home. etc.

Is it the luxury of aesthetics that drive you? i hope you have made something aesthetically worthwhile in your life at least.

You have to do what you have to do. A mask is a double barrier — from you to others, from others to you.

I’m sure the vírus will avoid you because you signaled no fear…

Well if US and other forces wouldn’t have killed thousands of Islamists and if Iraq intervention did not had showed Muslim world what Islamists do, what would be the chances?

The subject of risk perception and risk management, on all kinds of issues, comes up a lot for me in conversation and with a couple of coworkers from time to time. This sort of thing- why are people so afraid of terrorism when they could die in a car crash so easily.

I generally agree with this sort of thing, even when it is offered as one of those unreflective tropes one sees in newsmagazine columns. Sometimes they’re right, although the reasoning toward and from these conclusions is usually weaker.

For example- yep, the odds of any North American dying from terrorism, even factoring in 9/11, has never been that high. One is right to fear violent crime a little more, but not too much depending on where one lives, and disease more still, and accidents on the road more yet, and accidents in the home even more. And, even with COVID in the background, chronic and lifestyle diseases even more than all of them.

And to evaluate risk and take measures accordingly.

Of course, the recommended policy conclusions usually take this over the insanity line by concluding that we need not pursue terrorists, or secure pilot training, or secure borders, or kill enemies, until we have given over the roads to perfectly safe autocars or total public transit.

For me, the distinction is between a risk that is required to function in everyday life given our level of tech, etc., and which offers corresponding benefits, and one that just smacks of inattention.

Not that I think every measure to stop terrorism is valid at any price either, of course. It’s been overblown a lot with useless responses put in place.

A crude summation of what I like to think is a reasonable perspective- evaluate risks realistically, define what you are willing to accept and why, and probably accept those that are most necessary to your way of life and be more aggressive with those that aren’t, which means some variation from the objective risks and the policy results.

Of course, the actual odds of any one person dying in a traffic accident are pretty low in their own right, so we all kind of operate with that in mind too.

All that rambling was kind of a prelude to a question- if you don’t mind- what sort of things were you raised to most fear and, if not likely to be obvious, what taught you to later evaluate them differently?

For my part, I can’t recall much specific from when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s that I was taught to fear. I remember the generic scares- Halloween candy with razor blades or poison. IIRC, the facts still are that that never happened even once in the real world. I don’t remember my mother being at all freaked about that, but it was in the air and on the news. We still collected candy and took homemade candy apples and regular apples from neighbours. Probably more cautious about whose doors and how many we knocked on than the previous generation of kids.

Toronto had a rash of teen and kid kidnappings in the 80s. I was mostly too old for any concern, especially being male. But my mother was probably a little unnecessarily skittish about me being out too late when I was 12-13 or so, especially when she knew I was just at a friend’s house a km or so away through a very safe residential neighbourhood.

That sort of thing- Toronto wasn’t exactly 1980s Manhattan.

More broadly, I somehow inherited a more pathological fear of debt, a little bit to a fault, but as long as our fiscal system lasts that has probably been beneficial.

I have a healthy respect for black swans, which by definition can’t be planned for. I have little faith in plans, especially those driven by fear.

So I’m not going to wear a surgical mask the rest of my life. It’s not a good look. It’s a purely passive defense, and that’s never a good look. It signals weakness and fear.

In parts of the Far East they do this because of some other plague some years back. They make a fashion accessory out of germ phobia. The girls even have a floral pattern on their masks. I haven’t the heart to tell them they look ludicrous.

There are reasonable precautions, and there are hysterical overreactions. What they do over there is over the top. Let’s not emulate it.

And maybe they could clean up those wet markets? Just saying.

Rob Zuazua
How can we get Americans to start wearing masks in public? I feel like most Americans have heard so much mixed messaging on masks and there is stigma attached.

I made https://teammasks.org to connect volunteer mask makers with those who need masks, but no one orders.

Kirk is right; it’s really easy to screw up protective gear. I’d like to see a mask integrated with a hooded sweatshirt, something something tubes bronchioling for small filtered air intakes behind your back, in your armpits, around your wrists, using teeny check valves so your normal motions power air toward your face. Loose enough that you can pick your nose through the mask (telling people ‘don’t touch your face’ my ass). Washable. disposable

Home made masks
https://medium.com/@thejanellemj/please-join-me-in-wearing-a-mask-71e0e3f4fe4a

Cuomo was told he needed to rebuild his ventilator stockpile, and that it would cost a bunch of money. Instead of doing that, he blew even more money on that solar boondoggle in upstate New York that only enriched his cronies. Obama was told to restock the N95 mask stockpile that was depleted after they used it up for the H1N1 pandemic that he didn’t even bother to declare (note the difference in coverage on that deal, which killed a bunch more people than this one has, so far…), and that didn’t happen. I haven’t heard what happened with Trump and that issue, but I wager it was like 9/11 and Bush–So much BS left undone and imprudently allowed to slide that it would have been a full time job just to try to figure out what hadn’t been done. And, with an uncooperative Federal bureaucracy? LOL…

A huge component of why we’re so screwed up has to do with that bureaucracy: Dr. Fauci, for example? A Hillary supporter. No telling what else is hiding in the politicized permanent fourth branch of government we’ve allowed to grow up, but it needs to be dealt with. Some of these people are actively sabotaging the country, out of pure political spite.

I almost think we need to sh*tcan the supposed “civil service reforms” from the 19th Century and go back to good old patronage. At least, that way, you knew you had biased crooks in position throughout the Federal government. And, given that we can’t imbue the bastards we put into those jobs with saint-like qualities, maybe the answer is to politicize the whole thing and downsize it to where we can manage to deal with changing them out every election cycle.

The bureaucrats have literally become a fourth, damn near dominant, branch of government. That has to change, or we’re all going to turned into their serfs.

I can’t tell if that message was just to hoard what was available for health workers, which I could at least respect, or just the usual patronizing of the citizens.