Democracy Dies in Darkness
Outlook

We’ve been left to calculate our virus risk on our own. We’re terrible at it.

Coronavirus is making everyone into amateur epidemiologists.

Perspective by
Joel Achenbach covers science and politics for the National desk. He has been a staff writer for The Post since 1990.
May 7, 2020 at 11:21 a.m. EDT
A pedestrian wearing a mask walks by an image of a wax figure of President Trump in the window of Madame Tussauds in Washington last week. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

A patient of Luana Marques, a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School, recently told her, “I am certain that I’m going to contract this virus, and I’m going to die, and my children will be alone.”

Marques walked her patient through the unlikeliness of such a dire outcome — all the improbabilities stacked upon one another. The patient showed no sign of infection with the coronavirus. Most cases of covid-19 are mild to moderate, and people usually recover at home. In every age group, the vast majority of people who contract the virus survive.