Not too long ago I was in a discussion about Objective vs. Subjective approaches to the world. Most of us deal with the world in a way that acknowledges both, and I don't see any reason to harp on this or that point. At issue in this post is the tension between the two standards in regards to
Covid 19 Virus.

We're told that, across the board (which includes the 1st, 3rd, and all worlds in-between) the death rate is approx 2% for Covid 19.

That's bad. What we forget sometimes is that we deal with the REALLY BAD every day. For instance, the chances that any woman will develop breast cancer is 1 in 8 over an 80year lifespan. In the 1st world, the survival rate (however you measure it) is about 80%, falling to 60% and 40% in the 2nd and 3rd worlds. If a woman is cursed with this, the U.S. is the place to be. Geography plays a huge role, here.

I was diagnosed with Malignant Melanoma----about 25 years ago. When I got the call, FROM THE DOCTOR (and anyone who's been there knows what I'm saying), I told him to let me sit down, first. And then I got the news, 97% chance that I'd have a 2nd excision and that would be the end of it. I went from almost peeing myself to feeling eternally blessed by those odds. I loved those odds, which came out to about a 1 in 33 chance that this was "going to be an issue." In the course of our brief call, I went from praying (me, an "atheist" at the time) for something better than 50-50--- to laughing out loud.
It was all the follow-up stuff that got into my head and kept me down. But there is comfort in "stats."

Here's another. And there are dozens over the course of every person's lifetime. Because my wife crossed the "over 36" threshold during pregnancy, we were advised that we might want to consider our options due to the odds that our child might be born with Down'sSyndrome. When we were finally given those odds, we measured them against the risks of having an Amnio, and the ridiculousness of it became apparent. Across the board, our odds of having a Down'sSyndrome child were less than 1-200. The risk of spontaneous abortion due to an Amnio were about 1 in 30 or 40 across the board. It wasn't even close. The deal was sealed when we decided to quit being "ping-ponged" by the concerns of "caregivers." There's a more personal coda to the story, but we reserve it for people we actually know.
Obviously, we had the kid. He's fine. He would have been "fine" in any event.

So, what all this is about is Relative Risk. The temptation is to let information clog our minds in an unprioritized fashion.
We are going to get pummeled with data, not all of it accurate. Suicide kills nearly as many people as a respiratory infections, just under 50k and just over, respectively.

Globally, over the last 20 years, we've averaged nearly 70k people dead per year due to natural disasters (earth caused). In 2018, in the U.S., the number was something under 400. Don't let the data overwhelm you.

Best to all! T