Big news today is the swine flu outbreak and whether we are going to have a serious outbreak or not. While I generally think a serious outbreak is unlikely, it is a bit more unsettling here since they had a mild outbreak in a school in Queens. That is getting pretty close to home. I still don't think it is a reason to panic and when you look at the numbers it seems like a pretty insignificant risk. But there is no upside so we have added swine flu risk to the list of risks we face everyday.
Everyday we all do things that have some risk attached. You can't take a shower without the risk of falling. Most of us have long ago decided that the risks are under control and we have relegated them to some remote part of our psyche. We know that driving has risks but we have to drive and we tend to think that the risks are minimal. I feel pretty safe in predicting that many more people will die this year from traffic mishaps than from swine flu. So why are we seeing so much swine flu concern? Simply because it is an added risk and we have not yet added it to that part of our psyche where we store known risk. As I have seen in a number of places, we have diseases that are much more dangerous right now than swine flu. However, the risk of getting tuberculosis or HIV are known and have been processed into our internal equations. Swing flu hasn't yet.
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