Topics: Biology, COVID-19, Dark Humor, Existentialism, Mathematics, Politics
Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Mark Twain, also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics
A follow-up to Tuesday’s post: VOC…
‘No Thank You, Mr. President’: GOP States Still End Mask Mandates Despite Covid-19 Rise And Warnings From Biden, CDC, Alison Durkee, Forbes Business, April 2, 2021
Having some “fun” with mathematics. It’s dark humor for all you young libertarians.
The current US COVID deaths are 573, 988 from https://ncov2019.live/.
The current US population is 332,494,997 from Worldometers.info. Each link updates minute-by-minute, so by the time you read this, these figures will have changed.
(US COVID deaths/current US population) x 100 = 0.17%. Round up to 0.2%.
That’s pretty low.
For the “freedom-loving libertarians” spring breaking in Miami, or Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Corpus Christi, Texas – a thought experiment:
100,000 of you are about to dive in the ocean.
There is a 0.2% = 0.2/100 chance some of you will get devoured by sharks.
100,000 x (0.2/100) = 200 dead spring breakers.
So, out of 100,000 – 200 = 99,800, or 99.8% have a very good chance of not becoming “chicken of the sea,” and surviving your spring break. The dilemma is, there will still be blood in the water. Blood that carries pathogens that despite your “Y” swimming lessons and the saline environment, you might ingest red tide, and suffer the consequences.
The problem is, your 0.2% chance is not zero. Under normal circumstances (and pandemics are once-in-a-century “not normal”), there’s no libertarian case for this:
Physics and Nano 