12/19/20

skit: covid-19 and math

So Chicago is part of this county called Cook county. As of today Cook county has 368759 reported reported covid cases. Cook county has a population of approximately 5.5 million people. I did some math and a few things happened. 

One I found out about 1 and 13 people have covid19. My immediate thoughts were I really need these numbers to be more divisible. Like one in 10, a fifth, an eighth, or half. The part of my brain that likes pretty math is very strong. For a whole 5 minutes I forgot that this was not a second grade in a vacuum math problem that is never going to happen in real life. This is real life. Then I thought to myself one in 20, 1 and 50, 0 out of a 100. Like I said the part of my brain that likes pretty math is very strong. 

Second thing I thought was 1 and 13 is not too bad. 13 is a Baker's dozen. If one donut out of the 13 were poisonous and would kill me I'd still risk it. Especially the rest of the donuts are delicious. But then I thought if one and 13 people were murderers I probably stay in the house. Like if the New York times reported one in 13 people in Cook county are committing bioterrorism I'd never leave the house. I'd be terrified That's a lot of people. But if I was bit by one out of every 13 dogs I petted I'd still pet dogs. actually that probably depends on how bad I was bitten each time. If it's like a scratch then yeah no I'm still petting the dogs. If I'm losing a finger I might reconsider. 

My third and final thought was we really do need to frame it like we're losing fingers and people are committing bioterrorism. Because when I thought about it like donuts or chocolates it didn't seem so bad. But when I thought of it like serial killers quarantining got a lot easier. Thinking about it like everyone's out to get you much like Amoung Us really makes me much less likely to go outside. It kind of makes me feel like I'm trying to survive the purge. So think of it less like a inconvenient pandemic that we're all sick of and more like a really long purge that we're all trying to live through. Zoom meetings become way more tolerable when you're trying to avoid being murdered. 

No comments: