Risk assessment

The Senate Thursday (2005-09-29) approved spending more than $3 billion on anti-viral medications, including one intended to fight avian flu.

It remained to be seen whether the House would also approve the funding. The measure approved by the Senate -- attached to a military funding bill -- authorizes spending $3.08 billion to increase federal stockpiles of anti-viral medications. The amendment calls for spending $125 million to increase domestic production of an avian flu vaccine, but does not specify how the money will be spent.

The Bush administration signed a contract in August with Sanofi-Pasteur to begin producing initial doses of a vaccine against H5N1, the virus causing avian flu.

Public health experts in the public and private sectors have warned about the danger of an avian flu pandemic. Humans have no natural immunity to the virus, so if it spreads, it could cause widespread illness and death.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta projects widespread human-to-human transmission could kill as many as 200,000 people in the United States.

I was visiting London last Thursday when a second wave of attacks hit the city, just two weeks after the traumatic events of July 7. It is hard to avoid feeling vulnerable to this invisible enemy who does not play by known or explicit rules. Of course, that is precisely the anxiety that terrorists seek to produce. But its opposite - complacency - is not an option.

The truth is that neither human beings nor modern societies are wired to respond rationally to terrorism. Vigilance is easy to muster immediately after an event, but it tends to wane quickly, as the attack vanishes from public discourse. We err twice, first by overreacting right after the disaster, while we are still in shock, and later by under-reacting, when the memory fades and we become so relaxed as to be vulnerable to further attacks.

Terrorism exploits three glitches in human nature, all related to the management and perception of unusual events. The first and key among these has been observed over the last two decades by neurobiologists and behavioral scientists, who have debunked a great fallacy that has marred Western thinking since Aristotle and most acutely since the Enlightenment.

Three years ago the federal government began passing out pills that may protect against some of the most dangerous effects of radiation. Fourteen states whose residents live near nuclear power plants haven't bothered to accept them.

Never mind that experts say the over-the-counter potassium iodide pills are the cheapest and easiest way to prevent radiation poisoning -- especially in children -- in case of a nuke accident. Last year, a report commissioned by Congress recommended that everyone under 40 near a nuclear power plant should have the pills on hand.

Despite the efforts of nuclear safety advocates and medical associations, the pills' existance remains fairly obscure. "You sit there scratching your head and say, 'Why aren't they giving it out?'" said Alan Morris, president of Anbex, the only potassium iodide pill manufacturer in the United States.

If you believe you're a good driver or a lousy dancer, think again.

Most of us believe we can accurately gauge how our personal performance and abilities stack up against our peers, but new research suggests that we are in fact poor judges of our own comparative talents.

Researchers from the University of Michigan Business School, Duke University and the University of Chicago report that people at all skill levels, including both top achievers and poor performers, show similar degrees of inaccuracy and bias in making interpersonal comparisons.

The 9/11 commission has drawn more attention for the testimony it has gathered than for the purpose it has set for itself. Today the commission will hear from Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser to President Bush, and her account of the administration's policies before Sept. 11 is likely to differ from that of Richard Clarke, the president's former counterterrorism chief, in most particulars except one: it will be disputed.

There is more than politics at work here, although politics explains a lot. The commission itself, with its mandate, may have compromised its report before it is even delivered. That mandate is "to provide a 'full and complete accounting' of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and recommendations as to how to prevent such attacks in the future."

It sounds uncontroversial, reasonable, even admirable, yet it contains at least three flaws that are common to most such inquiries into past events. To recognize those flaws, it is necessary to understand the concept of the "black swan."