Think 99.6% Survival Rate is OK?

Here’s why it isn’t.

On British television last night they showed a clip of a woman somewhere in the USA who was most indignant about the need to wear a face mask. “Do you realise this disease has a 99.6% survival rate?” she asked the reporter.

I want to ask her does she realise what a 99.6% survival rate means?

I want to ask her to think about the people she knows: her uncles, her aunts, her cousins, the people who live on her street, the shop-keepers in her neighborhood, the people who attend her church, her work colleagues.

I’m thinking she would have little difficulty in counting up to 250 people to whom she is related or who she encounters on a frequent basis.

What a 99.6% survival rate means is that, if all of them get the disease, one of them will die.

But for every one that dies up to 10 will have to spend several days or weeks in hospital suffering respiratory problems. A few of those will spend days or weeks on a ventilator. An extremely distressing state of affairs for them and for those who love them.

And, in a country lacking universal healthcare, having a serious impact on their financial health also.

Is she so selfish as to not care that, because of her failure to take simple…