<p>To Canadians and Europeans, the US looks like a violent mess in the news too. Can you imagine people outside of the US not visiting because you have violence in your news? It would be absurd of course, because you know the regular stories that hit the news about murders in the US does not at all reflect your experience of living in the US. </p>
<p>While I somewhat understand the Mexico fear, I REALLY don’t get the fear about Aruba… or very one-off isolated incidents. As if that tells you anything about the overall risk! It would be like saying “hey I heard about a plane crash…I’m never flying again!”</p>
<p>People lose perspective so quickly. They take some things in the news, sometimes singular but salient events, and extrapolate them to be high personal probability when in fact, I’m sure if we ran the numbers, the odds of you dying from violence in Mexico on vacation is less than you being mugged in your own city, or being hit by a car next week, and so on.</p>