Being Afraid of the Right Things

Kevin Vranes at his new scienceblogs home (note to self – update many links in various places to all the people what just moved there) has a couple of posts that circle around a favorite topic of mine: being afraid of the things that will really kill a lot of people, and not about the things that sound scary but won’t. He makes a good case that bird flu and the other disease-of-the-day scares are not worth big bother. And if his discussion on the earthquake threat in Caracas doesn’t scare the crap out of you, you’re not paying attention. Apparently we also should be very afraid of this Paul Epstein chap.