Birds and Snakes and Aeroplanes, Part 18

“That kind of naive optimism in the face of encroaching disaster is a pitfall of owning a human brain, several experts on the psychology of risk perception told me recently.

People have trouble appraising exponentially growing problems, seeing exactly how they themselves might be affected, and understanding the best way to help when disaster arrives. Our brains aren’t designed to anticipate threats such as pandemics, which allows the tiny, brainless pathogens to get the upper hand as we fumble along.

The only way to counteract these biases, experts say, is to prepare ahead of time. Which is, alas, something the United States also failed to do.”