Thread by @AlexandraErin

Thing is, I think a lot of people would, and then if they started dying, they would accuse you of having lied to them because they think a 1 in a 100 chance happening just like that is impossible.

https://twitter.com/Toure/status/1478387017692192773

I think that psychologically, people tend to hear odds as difficulty levels. If you tell them that there's a 1% chance of dying if you go into that room, what they hear is "It's really easy to avoid dying in that room."

And after all, you could die in any room, at any time.

This is why people keep wanting to compare covid's estimated death rates to other diseases, and strains of covid to one another.

A guy who didn't get delta and never had the flu is thinking, "Delta and the flu didn't kill me, so how could omicron? It's *less deadly*."

So yeah, I think a lot of people would go into the room where they know they have a guaranteed 1 in 100 chance of dying, possibly even thinking this improves their odds over whatever unrated room they're in at the moment. 1 in 100? That's easy. Just don't be the 1.

And if a family of 10 goes into the room and 1 of them dies, they would be furious. They'd feel cheated. They weren't thinking "This is 10 chances for someone to die." They were thinking, "We each have an almost impossibly low chance of dying, so we should all survive."

And if 2 or more of them died? They would *know* they had been lied to, or maliciously targeted for extra death, because they were *promised* that no more than 1 in 100 would die, and yet more than 1 in 10 did.

I do think OP has a point that psychologically "99% survival rate" sounds more welcoming than "1 in 100 will die". It accentuates the positive: bigger number, better outcome.

But people will just reframe a bad rate into a good rate if they do that.

"1 in 100 will die? That means a 99% survival rate. And I'm a bad enough dude to be in the 99%. And so are all my friends, and my grandma, and my infant son."