One piece of good news during the recent UK Covid crisis, has been the rapid development and roll out of the new vaccines. Interestingly, there have been a number of people doubting these medications, trying to convince others that they are too risky to take. As I currently work through some large decisions in my own life, it is a useful reminder that in life we will be faced with choices that carry risk. In nature all living beings take risks, and for humans life without risk is life without challenge or reward.
When faced with problems, we often try to use intellect to make an informed decision. However when faced with complex, multiple, or perilous challenges the decision making is not so clear, so it often pays to consider the amount of risk involved. When we analyse potential rewards or gains compared to what you could lose, we can judge our risks in four ways:
Risks that you can afford to take – The consequence is acceptable or manageable. A good example of this is most people are happy to be introduced to others and make friends, despite not knowing them or where the relationship will go.
Risks that you can afford not to take – The benefits are so low that you can live without them. An example is not cashing in a pension to gamble on an investment that could bring higher returns, because it already provides sufficient income to live on.
Risks that you can’t afford to take – The outcome is unacceptable. We make this judgement when we pay home insurance premiums because we couldn’t afford the risk of paying the rebuild costs if the house were destroyed by fire.
Risks that you can’t afford not to take – The impact of doing nothing is too severe. For vulnerable people the risk of side effects of the vaccine are outweighed by the potentially severe outcome of catching the coronavirus.
Therefore risks are perceived differently by different people, and often specific to individuals. This is why we shouldn’t try to enforce personal opinion about acceptance or avoidance of risk onto others.