The sportsbooks assure us that “life is all about taking risks.” Isn’t it a risk every time you cross the street? We accept risk as the cost of potentially receiving an even greater reward; sports betting is no different from investing, having kids, or even commuting. May the gods of odds be ever in your favor.
On the other hand, the fight-Covid campaign’s durability into 2023 reminds us that we are being conditioned to find risk intolerable—especially risk regarding our physical health. Medical technology from aspirin to Zoloft addresses every ache and pain, and we can treat even the most aggressive maladies with cutting-edge interventions. Vaccines have made diseases like smallpox as distant as dinosaurs. We’re beyond ancient problems like viruses, aren’t we?
In retrospect, the emergence of zero-Covid fanaticism was inevitable. These zealots would, no matter how endemic the virus, happily shut down every facet of American life to “zero out” risk. They place lopsided value on booster shots for the general population. And public officials still downplay masking’s downsides, especially for children; they regard any risk of bodily harm as intolerable, but they dismiss social and psychological harms or rationalize them as a small price to pay.
Together, the sportsbooks and the Covid hawks represent qualitatively misplaced attitudes toward risk.
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