If you can keep your head

The headlines keep buffeting us with crises. How do I know when to take action, and what kind?

I want to advise someone who is not a specialist in the whatever the crisis-du-jour is. First--the generic steps to take to learn and evaluate; second--a specific example.

Big picture:

1. The world has lots of things and people trying to kill you.
2. Sooner or later something will kill you.
3. In the meantime there will be plenty of real and false alarms.
4. Nobody tells one from the other 100% of the time.

Now that that's out of the way: What about the current crisis?

1. Turn off the TV. And the radio. Log out of Facebook and put your cell phone away. They all make money out of making you afraid.
   
2. Get a pen and a pad of paper and sit down at the kitchen table. If you're nervous, recite a Psalm or sing a campfire song.
   
3. Write down what the crisis is supposed to be about.
   
4. Write down how it is supposed to effect you.
   
5. Write down these questions. Don't start looking for the answers yet.
   
   1. Who says this? Reporters are as ignorant as you are. So are politicians. Find out the source they are quoting. If they don't give you a source, ignore the report and find one that does--if you can.
      
      1. Is the source they are quoting flogging a new book?
      2. Does the source have an expert's credentials? For example, is this a lawyer talking about medicine?
      3. Do other experts have something to say?
      4. Is the source credible? For example, a lawyer will always say his client is innocent, and totalitarian state officials will always cover up problems.
   2. What are the sources actually saying will happen, as opposed to what may happen? Remember that the media have a vested interest in playing up the worst case scenario. Write down the "may" case and the "worst" and, if they have it, the "best."
   3. Who benefits if the worst case comes to pass?
   4. Who benefits if we take the recommended action to stop the worse case? Sometimes the beneficiaries are politicians grabbing power; sometimes these are particular people or industries. That someone benefits does not make a claim false, but it is something to keep an eye on.
   5. What things might happen to you - short term - in the worst case? In the likely case?
      
      1. What are the chances that each of these might happen? For example, suppose you're worried about getting hit by a stray bullet. If you don't usually hear gunfire, the chances are very small. If you do: how often are people accidentally shot, and how many people live in the danger zones? Divide the first by the second--that's roughly your risk. It may be less if you live in higher stories of a building, or much higher if your neighbor is a gangster. Raw numbers can be scary; rates less so.
   6. What can you do to reduce your risk? You do not have anything to prove to anybody here--forget phrases like coward or racist or "bad for the planet." Just figure out what you might do.
      
      1. Any action, including no action, carries risks. What is the risk of your possible action? For example, if you are worried about getting mugged, you might think of investing in a bullet-proof vest. This has some risks--to an experienced eye you stand out, and you don't want attention, and it makes it harder to run when you need to run away.
      2. What is the opportunity cost of your possible action?
      3. If you are a Christian (I am), imagine trying to explain to Jesus why this action is a good plan. Write that down.
   7. Have things like this happened before? Make a list of times and places.
      
      1. How is the situation now different?
      2. Do the differences make any difference to your risk?
6. Figure out where you need to look for these answers, turn your computer back on, and go look. Ask for help if need be. Remember that even the devil can tell the truth sometimes. Collect the answers.


7. What does the risk look like now?

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Take the Wuhan virus plague.

Ignore Trump. And Pelosi and Biden. What do the doctors say?

What may happen? If you find the numbers, you learn that something like 1% of people die. That's 10x worse than the average flu year, 10x better than the Spanish flu, and 50x better than Ebola. It is also about 10x worse than the average death rate from other causes. If the ER's get clogged, your chances of dying of something else are higher even if you never catch the disease. If you're old, the risk is high; if you're young your risk of dying is low--but your risk of passing it on to somebody else is high. So, say about 1% unless you're old, and a high risk of passing it on to somebody.

If you read widely, you find that the death rates vary all over the place. If you look even closer, you find that it is almost impossible to get true comparisons, because of reporting problems--if a country doesn't know how many are infected, it can't know what the rate is. So the 1% number that we got from the Diamond Princess is probably as good as you'll be able to know for a few months yet.

Who benefits in the worst case? Not even coffin makers; people will go cheap. Who benefits from extreme action? Politicians--as usual.

Can you reduce your risk? Yes--everybody has explained how. The question of whether to close businesses isn't a private question. Are you going to have a hard time explaining to the Almighty why you decided to skip going to a party and wash your hands? Probably not--those are decencies. You might have a harder time explaining why you decided not to take it seriously.

Have these things happened before? Yep. This one is worse than usual, but it could be a lot worse--and some day a really bad plague will come through. Similar--lots of people are going to die. Different--in this country, at least, we've got pretty decent medical care, which will help more people survive.