I have built up in my head the idea of all the things I'm going to do 'once I get vaccinated', but at 90% that gets pushed off to "once most people get vaccinated". If it were by myself, I might push my luck. But I want to do those things with friends, or family. .9^n is pretty shitty odds once n gets to around 5.

There's a sort of rhetoric that's pointed out by 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' as a warning sign for agendas, and I've seen a bunch of them used by both sides this election cycle. But at the same time one of the defenses against these rhetorical devices is reframing: rephrase the bargain from another context and see if you'd still accept it. They don't seem to reconcile that in public discourse this reframing happens in public.

"If I go out for steak, I'm probably okay at 90%," versus, "If we have our family reunion at Disney World, there's a 50% chance we're all going to be attending a funeral in a month, even if everybody got the vaccine." You could call the latter shrill, sure, but "there's a 50% chance everything will work out fine," is self-deception. You're trying really hard not to look at all of the potential, statistically significant outcomes.