There is no great surprise in encountering a sky-diver who is terrified of spiders. This is apparently true even where the list of serious hazards is dominated by war, famine, and infectious diseases instead. Considering how many lives are at stake, the enormous difficulty of warning people gets surprisingly little comment. We are not especially surprised, bewildered, or offended when others fail to take a risk seriously enough. All these propositions are difficult to convey effectively.
People tend to be particularly resistant to the idea that they are at risk.
This unrealistic optimism permeates our response to risk, and we support it by concocting from the available information a rationale for the conviction that the hazard will pass us by, even if it strikes our neighbors and friends. Several newer models of self-protective behavior postulate that different messages are important at different stages of the process. Information about risk magnitude may be most important in making people aware of risks they have never heard of, while information about personal susceptibility may matter more in the transition from awareness to the decision to act. And deciding to act is by no means the same as acting. As advertisers have long known, what makes the difference between procrastination and action isn't information, but frequent reminders and easy implementation.