An engineer and anti-vaxxer arrive at a bridge. The anti-vaxxer asks, “Is it safe to cross the bridge?”
Engineer: We built this bridge using a new, never-before deployed outside of the lab stabilizing platform. In the lab, we built 14,000 bridges using this new platform and 14,000 bridges using natural stabilizing approaches. After 14 days of driving, 5 of the bridges using the new plaform developed cracks vs 90 using the natural approaches. But none of the 28,000 bridges collapsed.
Anti-vaxxer: what happened after 14 days? That's not a long time to test stability.
Engineer: We don't know; we usually test these platforms for 2-3 years but we got an emergency authorization approval to use the new platform. I should also point out that 96% of the 14,000 bridges with the new platform had drivers that were sick thereafter; it's also possible some of those 96% sickened drivers became more cautious (some went home and stopped driving) and that behavior may have impacted the rate-of-crack formation on those 14,000 bridges. But in the end, nobody died in that 14 day period.
Anti-vaxxer: thanks for the full discussion. I'll take my 99.36% chance of not having a cracked bridge and my 100% avoidance of not getting sick in lieu of the 99.96% chance of not having a cracked bridge and my 4% avoidance of not getting sick, based on 14 days of observation. Maybe in 2-3 years I'll drive on the other bridge. Thank you very much.
Engineer: you're an anti-science idiot.
Vaxxer: I’ll dive right in. This water is fine.