3 ms·

The increased risk affects everyone, even if the risk doesn't materialize for everyone.

• jdmichal 5y ago
  "At increased risk for being at increased risk" is theoretically meaningful, but practically nonsensical unless you can tell which group someone falls into. If you can't, you may as well collapse all the probability into either being at increased risk or not.
  • xorfish 5y ago
    You have no way of knowing if the increased risk materializes for you. Saying that playing russian roulette doesn't affect you if you don't get the bullet is nonsensical.
    • jdmichal 5y ago
      No, see, that's not a good comparison. You're already doing exactly what I said, which is compressing to a single probability. There's only one probability in russian roulette. The prior is that you pulled the trigger. The probability is whether you got a bullet. There's two layers of probability in this instance. The prior is that you had COVID. The first layer is whether, due to your infection, you're at increased risk for the various heart diseases. The second layer is whether you actually get heart disease. If you cannot determine which group an individual is in for the first layer, then insisting that it exists doesn't really help except for "well akshually". "You're at risk for increased risks of heart disease." Just collapse the probabilities to a single layer, "You're at increased risks of heart disease."