It doesn't have to be a literal mass-extinction event for this type of thing to lead to some catastrophic events affecting people you know and care about. If it were to happen (I honestly hope it doesn't) to someone you care about, I am sure that "the experts told me things were fine" will be of little consolation.
How about dropping the sarcasm and word-thinking and start to put some thought into the questions I made regarding the WHO recommendations up until some weeks ago? I bet if you could go back in time to Italy just three weeks ago, you wouldn't be telling people to just "listen to the experts", would you?
Now a slightly longer one. Guidelines on how infection risk can be minimised are very consistent. And they make perfect sense. So yes, that's the advice I give my two kids, my parents (both of which fall into the high risk age groups, luckily they are following that advice already without me), and the advice I follow myself.
WHO recommendations are based on the best available picture to them. I prefer to trust someone changing his opinion when data changes over someone who paints a worst case scenario from day one on.
And yes, if someone from my family ultimately dies, which I really don't hope, having done everything experts told us to do to prevent it would be the only consolation there is. The alternative being fear mongering, panic and paranoia. In which any infections happening toy loved ones (assuming I am the only factor behind there behaviour, which I am thankfully not as my family thinks pretty well for themselves) would be to a certain degree on me.
And the experts have assessed the risk. Hence the advice they give. But you do you, ok? As long as you stop spreading stories about mass extinction and stuff like that.
Also, while different, it's not necessarily benign—just more complicated.
Criticisms of national identity can't be topics of curious conversation on the public internet. A small, closed group could, but a large open group can't. 'Large' implies that someone is going to get activated, and 'open' implies that they can show up and comment—at which point game over.
Also, precisely due to this disconnect between what we write and how it can be perceived, it does seem helpful to me to occasionally have some curved ball thrown into the mix to help calibrate my sense of (a) where the other party is coming from and (b) check if the other party is willing to listen to you or just participate in a screaming match.
And no, that is exactly not how risk assessment is supposed to work.