Are we ready for more personal responsibility?

Created: 2/14/2022Updated: 2/14/2022 10:02 AM

Research on risk: Ortwin Renn, Scientific Director of the Institute for Transformative Sustainability Research (IASS).

© Wolfgang Kumm/dpa

The easing debate is picking up speed.

As soon as the rules fall, everyone has to decide for themselves how to deal with the risk of infection.

Risk researchers explain why we so often come to misjudgments.

Frankfurt/Main – Objectively, the risk of a corona infection has never been as high as it is these days.

At the same time, politicians are discussing future easing of the pandemic and thus more responsibility for every individual citizen.

But can we assess the danger?

The risk of vaccine damage is negligible compared to the risk of infection, but some decide against the injection.

Some still hardly dare to leave the house for fear of infection, others see the risk as low.

Decisions are not rational

Since the beginning of the pandemic, it has become apparent under a magnifying glass that the way we deal with risks is not always rational.

And that's not just in the head, but above all in the stomach, as the two best-known German risk researchers, Ortwin Renn and Gerd Gigerenzer, explain.

They describe why we find it so difficult to assess risks correctly and what can be done to improve this.

If politicians are now discussing an end to the Corona measures, that is quite important.

The creative freedom for citizens increases when they loosen the reins.

Do I voluntarily wear a mask?

How many people do I invite to my party and ask if they are vaccinated?

In short: are we ready for more “risk-taking”?

Renn coined this term in his book "The Risk Paradox - Why We Are Afraid of the Wrong" long before Corona.

Today, the scientific director at the Institute for Transformative Sustainability Research in Potsdam says: "I do think that in many things one can expect citizens to have more judgment and be able to trust them."

"The problem is: If you have a high mortality rate, a few percent who are not of risk age are enough to infect the rest."

Therefore, in the first wave, Renn thought it was right to make strict regulations.

In his opinion, sufficient precautionary measures have now been taken to enable individuals to better weigh up the risks.

But it remains a tightrope walk: "The population is just not a homogeneous mass."

Gigerenzer, author of the book "Risk - how to make the right decisions", emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and head of the Harding Center for Risk Competence, makes a harsh judgment: "People have not learned to take risks to assess correctly.” He diagnoses “an illiteracy in relation to numbers” and includes researchers, journalists and politicians.

There is no such thing as 100% security

In order to assess risks correctly, one should never look at absolute numbers, but only at their ratio.

"When the risk of thrombosis became known with Astrazeneca, some thought: I'll play it safe and don't get vaccinated.

What was not considered was that this massively increased the risk of dying in an intensive care unit.

So if I avoid one risk, I can take a much bigger one.”

The false expectation that vaccinations must prevent infection 100 percent also plays a role here.

"The illusion of certainty is fatal," says Gigerenzer, 100 percent security does not exist anywhere.

The fact that people expect this is also due to what he sees as the government's inadequate "risk communication".

“It would be correct to say: We know that.

We do not know that.

We do this to learn more.

And you should do that until then.

You have to communicate the uncertainty.

Then people will have more trust in the judgments of the decision-makers.”

In general, people tend to overestimate some dangers and underestimate others, Renn explains in the "Risk Paradox": Dangers that are not in the individual's control, which are statistically rare but have catastrophic consequences - such as plane crashes or natural disasters - are overestimated.

Dangers are underestimated whose consequences only appear later - such as smoking - or "systemic" risks whose causes are complex - such as climate change.

"Both are the case in the corona pandemic, which makes things complicated," says Renn.

He has identified classic "judgment traps" that mislead us when assessing risks.

A trap is our intuition.

Example of the incidence curve: The fact that the number of infections first increases slowly and then increases more and more, the so-called exponential curve, "that contradicts our intuition".

Or the experience that even those who have been vaccinated three times can become infected with omicron, while one or the other non-vaccinated person is lucky and doesn't get it, "that's something that's difficult to understand."

This is where the appeal of conspiracy myths lies, Renn believes.

One of the great promises of such constructs is “that they offer absolute security.

As absurd as that may be, it's an explanation for everything.

Everything that happens I can incorporate there one-to-one, because it's just a fantasy product.

Then the stress caused by the uncertainty is gone.”

Renn sees the risk competence of the Germans more optimistically than Gigerenzer.

"I would say that two-thirds to three-quarters of the people in Germany behaved sensibly - that is, appropriate to the risk - during the pandemic." However, he is currently observing a certain blunting.

“We call this the recalibration of normality: what is considered normal has changed.

You get used to a certain number of corona deaths, bad as that is.

Caution has eased since the first wave.”

The sense of risk decreases

This is also shown by the long-term study Cosmo, a project of the University of Erfurt, the Robert Koch Institute, the Federal Center for Health Education and other institutions.

Every two weeks, almost 1,000 representatively selected adults are also asked about their risk perception in the pandemic.

"We are in a situation in which the risk perception is falling despite the increasing number of cases," the authors summarize the current report with data from mid-January.

Although people perceive an increased risk of infection with Omikron, "however, the perceived risk has decreased".

Despite Omikron, the proportion of people who consciously avoid contact has not increased further.

In retrospect, it is striking that risk perception has remained largely constant since the beginning of the pandemic - regardless of how the incidences were at the time.

A graphic shows two only slightly curved red and yellow waves (the perceived risk of infection and the perceived risk), which have cut through the massive gray spikes in the reported infection numbers almost horizontally since March 2020.

fear the wrong ones.

Fischer paperback, 608 pages, 14.99 euros, ISBN 978-3596198115

Gerd Gigerenzer: Risk - How to make the right decisions.

Pantheon Verlag, 440 pages, 14.00 euros, ISBN 978-3570554425 dpa