Well said... I feel like someone out there has developed a dashboard like this.

We are pretty good at death counts, it's easy. All the data is there. Tied to anonymised health condition as aggregates.

The problem is how do we even start to evaluate the cost of prevention. Measures? We have equipment and labour costs, that's easy to measure but the data is not made available. But then what is the opportunity cost on those who are inflicted the measures. A person goes on holiday and can perhaps browse a book while queuing for an hour to go through the security checks, a business traveller is simply standing there, unable to even make a phone call due to lack of privacy.

Also, if we spend 1 trillion usd on say the prevention of terrorism, and we "only" suffered 20 death in the United States during that period, it doesn't mean halving the expense would only double the death toll. We put measures and have no tool to measure their effect, high number of variables, and each of their weight evolve dynamically.

I think we better spend time educating the media industry to somewhat control the increasing rate of fear inducing columns published each second. And if they don't learn, regulate them since we are already regulating countless industries for that matter.

Strong door to flight deck, and policy change to keep door closed and locked, eliminated hijacking risk. Everything else is an expensive show which air travellers apparently enjoy. They keep paying for it.

They don't enjoy it. It's mandated, and the cost isn't itemised on the ticket fare. If each and every traveller knew the cost of airport security measures put on them, more would complain, the most drastic airports may start to be avoided on principle. But we aren't in a capitalist regime where transparency and obligation to inform accurately is enforced. It's authoritarian capitalism. Pay up, or find yourself excluded from the show.

Good points on tax transparency. Add-ons are itemized on air tickets in USA, though things like airport remodeling costs are opaque.

Expensive 'raise arms under arrest' full body scanners aren't advertised as opt-in by TSA, but they are voluntary. I always go through standard metal detector only.

Maybe the masses don't care enough about cost/ benefit and allow career beauracrats to run wild designing 'security'.

Did you know the food store workers near the gates walk around TSA screening at most airports? Crazy.

Few things upset me as much as headlines like this. Why are people ok with this - can they not see the second order effects?

For anyone interested in this, I recommend the following book: The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch.

Nuclear.

Which is too expensive to compete, another false narrative that we can't do it without nuclear (or that it is all hopeless without carbon capture or geoengineering).

We just have to use the tools that we have today (plus efficiency improvements).