DEAR EDITOR:

As a personal occupational security, well being and environmental guide, who’s labored 32 years in each enforcement and session sectors inside the Occupational Security and Well being Administration, I’ve needed to take care of what we frequently consult with within the discipline as “Promoting Security.”

The promoting is solely getting somebody to “settle for the chance.” It’s in all probability essentially the most troublesome job we within the discipline of security and well being steerage have. Even in case you present, clarify the chance with the likelihood of somebody getting injured or ailing related to an recognized threat relevant to a activity, use of a device, piece of apparatus or a day by day private process, many people merely ignore the data or the warning.

Stopping smoking might be probably the greatest examples I can provide. We’ve all heard comparable feedback: “My grandfather smoked two, three cigars a day and lived into his 90s.”

That is the place we’re in right this moment’s COVID-19 disaster. Many have accepted the chance and are staying house or when venturing out are donning the required or recommended face overlaying; others will not be; and a few really protest the suggestion or mandate. The explanation? There are two: The Base Price and Optimism Bias.

The “Base Price” is solely the likelihood of one thing occurring, like getting struck by lightning, which is 1 in 700,000 in a yr. No person takes that too severely– ask a fisherman or a golfer. The second, the “Optimism Bias,” is the tendency all of us have, extra so once we are younger, during which we underestimate the chance. Optimism bias is fueled by concern, incapability to regulate the chance and by conflicting information supplied, aka contradicting information stories.

For my part as a guide, I consider the optimism bias is the extra highly effective purpose for denial than the bottom charge. When somebody primarily based on concern, the unknown, the “nothing I can do” side of an recognized threat, they select to disregard or discredit stated threat. That’s the place we’re at with right this moment’s COVID-19 disaster.

To beat such bias, we’d like receptive, upfront, unopinionated management. We have to depend on the consultants and professionals within the discipline of the chance. I’m not seeing such presently.

Keep secure, keep wholesome.

JOHN P. LESEGANICH SR.

Canfield