Problematic Probabilities

The p-value of awareness

When I was in High School, a mishap in the lab triggered the fire alarm and the entire student, teacher, and administrative population spilled out into the school yard. I was a good girl back then, the student rep to the Local School Council and close buddies with the LSC President’s son. We weren’t trouble kids (although we got busted for smoking in the boys bathroom, the nineties were a drag, sometimes) and were popular in our own regards, but that fire alarm day, a gorgeous spring day at the end of our sophomore year, Larry and I and two other buddies got in my car, left the crowd of unruly Chicago public school teenagers behind, and went to the zoo where we watched gawky giraffes copulate awkwardly. The nineties were carnal, sometimes.

My popularity had a lot more to do with having a car and giving folks rides because my ma let me drive on a permit without supervision. She thought that commuting on city buses was more dangerous. Yes, she is the kookiest but also the coolest. Thanks, ma! (But also, don’t get me started on how many indecent exposures I’ve had to endure as a teen on public transportation. CTA has gotten tons better since.)

In 1994, my alma mater had a student population of 2180. Give or take 200 teachers, administrators, and support staff, there were probably close to 2380 fire escapees that day. And yet, not a one of them noticed us gone. In the commotion, the four of us managed to play hooky without getting in trouble at all.

I bring this anecdote up because my brain was connecting dots between some statistics I recently read about and some questions posed by covid narrative dissenters, mainly: “If people are dying from vaccine related injuries at a rate of about 1 in 2,400, why are normies not noticing? Actually, I’m sure my brain also made the connection because somewhere in my early days of pouring into research of the narrative, someone had brought the very example up of noticing a person gone in a fire alarm situation. It spoke to me enough that I’ve used it in conversations with friends to help put the numbers in perspective. Especially during pandemonium, does one notice a rate of an unusual or untimely death against the background of regular death? I’m guessing not.

Now, imagine you’re Indiana Jones and it’s your last crusade and you’re in the cave with 2,400 chalets and you have to take a shot out of only one. But one of the 2,400 cups has a poison that will melt your skin, gouge out your eyeballs, dissolve the flesh off your bones and even the bones themselves will turn to dust in a matter of 38 seconds.

As YouTube commentators noted dutifully, “He chose poorly” was the most apropos punchline the knight could come up with in 700 years.

The Indiana Jones trilogy was one of the best series to come out during my childhood. Fight me.

Ok, back to the covid narrative. I’m playing with the analogy of poisonous chalets to pose the question: If you knew that 1 in 2,400 injections could kill you, would you take the risk? The odds seem to be in your favour, god knows those are great odds if you’re trying to win the jackpot, but would you bet your life on it? I’m guessing not.

My friend Kalev just reminded me of how these conjectures parallel prospect theory and I couldn’t agree more. Swap the content of the loss aversion from ‘money’ to ‘life’ and the cognitive bias and the overconfidence effect shield us from the reality of the situation: yes, people are dying at an unusual rate from unusual deaths and no, not everyone is necessarily noticing. But some are noticing. More and more are noticing. Exponentially, they’re noticing. Because the p-value of our null hypothesis is shrinking with each jab as the awareness expands.

And just before I get stuck in the weeds of probability theory, I’m hoping that someone way more statistically inclined (MC, help!) can figure out what that means in respect to jab occurrences. Does your risk increase with each injection as the aggregate of the poison cumulates in your body’s weakest spots? Does your risk decrease due to survivorship bias, after all, you survived the first four jabs, you’re immune to that pesky and omnipresent mRNA that teaches your body to be a toxic spike protein factory? Or does your risk stay the same? And more importantly, how many people become aware there is a risk in the first place.

The tide has definitely and definitively turned: less and less people are lining up for boosters; hardly any parents are jabbing up their kids; about a quarter of the folks I know have been to the doctor for some kind of inexplicable ailment that expressed itself post shot; courts are serving up some undeniable wins. When the pressure gets turned up this season, even more will begin to pull down the propaganda blindfold and we’ll need to assure them there’s hope instead of screaming out the biggest ‘I told you so’. We aren’t special for sussing out the sus. Under a different circumstance, I would have fallen for it too. But for those who pointed their fingers at me, ridiculed me, ostracized me, stipulated mandates to attend their children’s birthday parties, caused me to lose paid work (you know who you are), I’m allowed this moment of weakness in my character:

P.S. Just know that I might not be able to tell if you, yourself, clicked on the giraffe sex video, but I’ll know how many of you did. You can also just fess up in the comments so my audience engagement null hypothesis is rejected by a statistical significance. Thank you in advance.