There's a distinction here (I'm very much into distinctions, as many of you know) that ought to be made:

There is "hazard" and there is "risk". They are not synonymous. They need to be considered jointly.

"Hazard" has to do with the likelihood of a harmful event.

"Risk" then deals with the magnitude of the harm done if the hazard comes to fruition. As I see it, risk equals hazard times potential harm.

Thus, while we have extremely low hazard of an asteroid hitting earth, the degree of damage that would be done in the event of such striking is phenomenal.   Here, the high damage potential is pretty much negated by the exceedingly low hazard. Few (I suppose I can't say "none") of us actually worry about this hazard.

But if you have a very high likelihood (high hazard) of a particular event people will often go to great lengths to avoid it even if the likely damage is fairly small.

We all do this kind of balancing every day of our lives.

Dave Oesterreich