Why is gauging health risk so hard?

Hantavirus. Measles. Ebola. Cyclospora. Screwworm. West Nile Virus. Wildfire smoke. Alpha gal. That’s just the past month. It’s exhausting to track, and I imagine it’s exhausting to follow, too.

But cuts to public health infrastructure and a warming climate are only going to bring more. Add in a public that’s paying closer attention ever since the pandemic, low trust in institutions, barely any word from the federal government, and a media environment that needs clicks to survive and… you get a confusing mess.

In its wake is a cycle of panic and confusion about when to worry about what health threat and when to not. This is a very big problem. If something doesn’t turn out to be as big as the headlines suggest, people will start tuning things out (if they aren’t already). As a result, and over time, the U.S. will go even more backward in health, medical bills, and productivity because preventable diseases will be less and less prevented.

With a disease popping up practically every week, I’ve been constantly thinking about risk. And, in particular, why it’s so hard to gauge as individuals and why it’s so darn hard to communicate as a scientist. I think it comes down to four factors.