COVID "Risks"

What determines the risks we are willing to take? We are currently bombarded with information on COVID. There are governors of some states telling their citizens they must cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas. Did you realize there are more heart attacks on Christmas Eve than any other day of the year? I bet those governors have never given a warning about that. We fear the things we fear because we are taught to do so. If I asked a person with an elderly parent if they had to make a choice between them needing emergency Laparoscopic Gall Bladder surgery or getting COVID, the answer 9 out of 10 times would probably be surgery. Why? Because we have been taught that laparoscopic gall bladder surgery is no big deal and is very safe, but in reality that is not true. In elderly people it is not "very safe". If you look up the riskiest emergency surgeries cholecystectomy is number 6, mainly because there are so many performed. Most people would not even think twice about allowing their parent to have that surgery in a regional hospital and certainly wouldn't do the research to find the best surgeon in that field, like they would for the surgeries we have been told are "more risky". All of us have been taught that this is a simple thing. I was taught that, but in 2000 I learned when they say there is very little risk that means there is risk. Because when my mom decided to have the surgery at 68 years old, it was more of a decision of which one of us needed to take the time out of our schedule to go with her to the hospital for the "simple surgery", it was no big deal and the worst part of it was having to burn a vacation day. Three weeks later when we watched her take her last ventilator assisted breath, we realized what we had been taught was wrong. We fear what we are taught to fear.

Is loneliness more dangerous in the holidays than COVID? No, because we are not taught that. Is there greater benefit of getting together with a family member who may not be alive next year than the there is risk of COVID? I guess not, because that is not what they are teaching us. Is wearing masks preventing us from catching COVID? Absolutely, because that is what they are saying in the MSM, right before they give the next bit of news about the surge of new COVID cases in cities and states where there are mask mandates. My point, before anybody replies and says this is what the scientists are saying, is not that we shouldn't take precautions, it is that we make the decision to accept or fear risks based on what we are told because we are too lazy and apathetic to do the research ourselves.