Risk Assessment and the Modern Liberal

Risk assessment is in the news. Most of it phony. Let me give you an example: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, opened in 1990. In the last 28 years, approximately 84,000 students have passed through its halls. Fourteen didn't make it. For all you statisticians out there, that's .0001666 of the entire student body. If you averaged in all of the rest of the schools in Miami-Dade, Florida or the entire South, that number would decrease. If you averaged in every school in the United States, Columbine and Sandy Hook included, the numbers would still go down. Way down.

Now before you decry me as being cold and heartless, let me say that I deplore each and every one of those shootings. Any reasonable thing that can be done to prevent such incidents in the future should be implemented. (And by "reasonable" I intend to remain the final arbiter on that. Wrapping every student in bubble wrap and only feeding them through a tube is too extreme. Unless I can buy a lot of stock in bubble wrap companies.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. Risk factors. I have noticed that a number of students (perhaps prompted) have publicly stated and carried signs that stated that they "No longer feel safe in their schools". I find that hard to believe, unless some adult was telling them that this was the case. Have seventeen people ever died in a school bus crash? Have you ever heard a child say, "I no longer feel safe in a school bus"? Fifty thousand people die in car crashes every year. When was the last time you heard a child say, "I no longer feel safe in an automobile"? I'm not sure what the statistics are for lightning strikes or falling space debris, but have you heard cries of "I no longer feel safe going outside"?

Whoever is promoting this fearmongering among children should cut it out. Now. Teens are in far more danger of being killed texting while driving, but even though it is illegal, it is a greater threat. Will children boycott getting drivers licenses out of fear, overhyped or not? I don't think so.

Liberals need the emotional tug on the heartstrings of little children quaking in their shoes, fearful of their lives if they return to their classrooms. Thus, it is being artificially induced and I wish they would cut it out. You'll have to excuse me now. I have to buy some "falling space debris insurance".

It's a thing!