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it's not a threat, it's a promise. it's a guarantee. it's not a possibility, it's a certainty. report accurately! if you tell people "bad thing might happen" when "bad thing will happen" is more true, they aren't going to be careful enough. https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe/status/1265239181875449860
Americans in particular (and especially white Americans) are very deeply conditioned to assume that we're special and lucky: that "if X, then maybe Y" means "probably not Y" if Y is bad, and "probably Y" if Y is good.
we're very bad at understanding statistics and calculating risk; in short, white Americans are real dumb, and if you want to get us to understand facts accurately, you HAVE to convey them in simple, blunt language without hedging.
this is another good illustration of the same phenomenon! the WHO reports out of Wuhan defined "mild" as "not needing hospitalization in order to survive", but Americans went "oh, mild, so like a bad cold or a seasonal flu, no big deal" https://twitter.com/osutein/status/1265271720904134656
