The goal shouldn't be to get people to do what you want. It should be to give them sufficient information so they can make an informed decision on their own, even if you might disagree with it.
I'm not suggesting that personal liberty should trump SARS-Cov-2 precautions, but it's not really relevant to a discussion about whether risk should be framed in absolute terms or not. (Edited for clarity.)
Society does not care about your personal liberties if you are endangering the lives and well-being of others. Case in point, most people won’t mind if you drink until your liver turns to dust, but they do care if you get in a car and endanger the lives of others. Similar to that, not taking precaution in public to avoid contracting and spreading covid is endangering the lives of others as everyone has to go out in public to survive. By not taking precautions someone would be effectively deciding for those around them that covid is nothing to worry about. Any actions a person takes that knowingly increases the risk of death and injury to persons other than themselves are generally criminal offenses.
I disagree for a simple reason: while liberty is a great goal, if the liberty comes at a cost to the commons, it needs to be restricted. For example, as much as I'd love to let people chose to smoke and die of cancer, smoking affects a lot more than just the smoker. Alcohol DUIs leads to many driving deaths.
The OP suggested that risk shouldn't be communicated in absolute terms because people can't be trusted to make sound decisions. Presumably it's therefore better to only share relative risk numbers, which are almost always more frightening.
That's what I was responding to. I probably agree with most of your views on personal liberty versus the common good, but I think it's tangential to the original point about risk communication.
> The OP suggested that risk shouldn't be communicated in absolute terms because people can't be trusted to make sound decisions. Presumably it's therefore better to only share relative risk numbers, which are almost always more frightening.
That's not actually what I said, but I love your reasoning, so I'll adopt it.
Why:
> The goal shouldn't be to get people to do what you want. It should be to give them sufficient information so they can make an informed decision on their own, even if you might disagree with it.
How much information do you figure that'll require? Because our perception of how much is probably the difference between your perspective and mine.
I'm not suggesting that personal liberty should trump SARS-Cov-2 precautions, but it's not really relevant to a discussion about whether risk should be framed in absolute terms or not. (Edited for clarity.)