November 26, 2006

• We sure do worry about a lot.  I think I may buy this issue of Time just to read the full story.  Here are some excerpts:

  We agonize over avian flu, which to date has killed precisely no one
  in the United States, but have to be cajoled into getting vaccinated
  for the common flu, which contributes to the deaths of 36,000 Americans
  each year.

  We wring our hands over the mad cow pathogen that
  might be (but almost certainly isn’t) in our hamburger and worry far
  less about the cholesterol that contributes to the heart disease that
  kills 700,000 of us annually.

  We pride ourselves on being the
  only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a
  confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring
  probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while
  leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

  —- UPDATE —-

  Stupid me, I never bothered to check Time.com for the story; which can be found here.  There are a few interesting tidbits.  Such as the use of statistics to further a point and depending on how the stat is displayed have different emotional responses.

  The problem with habituation is that it can also lead us to go to the
  other extreme, worrying not too much but too little. Sept. 11 and
  Hurricane Katrina brought calls to build impregnable walls against such
  tragedies ever occurring again. But despite the vows, both New Orleans
  and the nation’s security apparatus remain dangerously leaky. “People
  call these crises wake-up calls,” says Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate
  dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and
  director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “But they’re
  more like snooze alarms. We get agitated for a while, and then we don’t
  follow through.”

  
  I found this interesting only because this is true for almost everything in our lives.  If we can wait til tomorrow to do something then tomorrow will never come.  It’s not until panic settles in that we wished today was not tomorrow but yesturday when we should have done something.  Finishing the replacing bedroom doors?  Bah.  I think I’ll blog some more, well maybe after I find something to eat.

  • 9:26 am
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