Clearly, you do not have [to consider] population [as a variable] because which countries look [exactly] like another country, right? And therefore, in that sense, you are on more solid empirical grounds than we are. In other words, we need a lot more assumptions because as much as we want to use facts, they do not exist. Nonetheless, we still have to make decisions.
And in that sense, the decisions that you make must depend on the consequences of mistakes and the probability of mistakes.