1) Let's talk about the word "safe." It’s defined today as "freedom from the risk of injury, danger, or loss," which is similar to its 14th century origin of "unscathed, unhurt, uninjured." Do you see the problem? It implies risks are binary rather than an interrelated spectrum.

2) Defining safe as "unscathed, unhurt, uninjured" crafts an illusion that risks possess only two outcomes - either unsafe or not. Hurt or unhurt. Further, it implies that safety is as simple as moving from the bad outcome to the good outcome.

3) In reality, risk is a spectrum - from certain to cause harm (like stepping in front of a train) to certain to be harmless, but with many gradients in between. Safety is about moving a risk towards the desired end of the spectrum.

4) But it's critical to recognize that doing so can create ripples across the multivariate risk universe. I could reduce the risk my dog chokes on food by simply not feeding it - but by lowering one risk I've simply raised another.

5) It's further critical to not just recognize the costs involved, but understand just how much of a move down the spectrum you’ll be achieving. It makes sense to walk on the sidewalk versus the middle of the road - the quantifiable reduction in risk would be substantial.

6) But imagine a risk carrying a 0.003% chance of harm - like, say, the under 20 Covid death risk; even if it were possible, how much should you do to try to get it further down the safety spectrum?

7) At some point, a risk has to be quantifiably low enough as to not warrant any intervention. Herein lies the crux of this year’s wholesale cheapening of the word "safety." We hear politicians and pundits talk about “being safe.” "Caring about our safety."

8) The problem is twofold. First, what they’re really saying is “we’re seeking to lower everyone’s well below 1% death risk to an unachievable 0% through unproven methods.” And secondly, “we’ll blind ourselves to all the other risks we’re simultaneously increasing.”

9) Humans actually intuitively understand ignoring low probability risks. How much does anyone actively worry about choking? Drowning? Car accidents? Falling down the stairs?

10) We don't fear getting in a car because we've done it a few thousand times with no consequences. That doesn't mean the risk has changed - we just stop caring after enough harmless episodes of exposure. Eventually, we learn to live with risk. This is called habituation.

11) The trouble is, our brains often make mistakes influenced by emotions and biases. I’ll end with Daniel Kahneman describing a phenomenon called “denominator neglect.” As Kahneman describes:

12) “You read that 'a vaccine that protects children from a fatal disease carries a 0.001% risk of permanent disability.' The risk appears small. Now consider another description of the same risk: 'One of 100,000 vaccinated children will be permanently disabled.'"

13) "The second statement does something to your mind that the first does not: it calls up the image of an individual child who is permanently disabled by a vaccine; the 999,999 safely vaccinated children have faded into the background."

14) "As predicted by denominator neglect, low-probability events are much more heavily weighted when described in terms of relative frequencies (how many) than when stated in more abstract terms of chances, risk, or probability."

15) "The effect of the frequency format is large. In one study, people who saw information about 'a disease that kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000' judged it as more dangerous than people who were told about 'a disease that kills 24.14% of the population.'”