The problem with statistics is that sometimes they give a wrong, incomplete answer. But, and this is what is important about statistics: sometimes they foretell what may be a complete answer.
There is a very, very, very small chance that tomorrow may not happen. But what if that chance was maybe 50% because we have just seen an asteroid/comet heading, maybe, for a collision with Earth and it is, likely big enough to destroy life on Earth much like what did happen ~65 million years ago.
Would you go to work tomorrow? Well, if you are an optimist, maybe. If you are a pessimist, probably not.
But, let’s say reported statistics predict that some percentage of those individuals tested will test positive for COVID-19 is 50%. This number is likely high because most testing is done on individuals who are some type of risk.
Let us say that, removing known risks, results in a percentage closer to 10%. What this may mean, that roughly 10% of the entire population, at a given point in time, will test positive for being infected by COVID-19. Given the nature of statistical representation, the result is believed to be accurate to some given ‘error’. Most likely these statistics are accurate to a probability of a very high percentage.
The question then becomes: are you willing to risk your health, and possibly your life, that the entire population may have some percentage of being infected with COVID-19 and a smaller percentage is at risk of death?
If you are an optimist, you probably will ignore the prospects and also ignore the protections to make you safer against the COVID-19 virus. If you are a pessimist, you will likely heed the prospects of infection and make protection against the COVIS-19 something to be adhered to even though it might be unnecessary. Only the future will tell who was wrong or correct.
We are fortunate to have some governmental folk willing to risk the wrath of the optimist and hope nothing happens to the pessimist. I chose to live with those governmental folk not willing to risk what might happen to the optimist.

I think your comment is articulate and well-reasoned, MikiSJ, and I appreciate your taking the time. The only thing I really disagree with — and it is a significant disagreement — is that government is needed at all, irrespective of the statistical odds, irrespective of optimism or pessimism. Government and its ever-mushrooming bureaus is inherently inefficient — by definition, I am prepared to argue: a ponderous, purblind, lumbering, ever-growing beast which cannot spend a single cent unless it first either taxes, borrows, or prints. Voluntary human action is the proper course, not government force.

Thank you for dropping by.

The problem with statistics is that …

… is that nine out of ten statistics are wrong?

I am not a libertarian and therefore believe that there is a need for a government. I can hardly imagine 330 million Americans all working for a better good, whatever that is – and therein lies the rub.

Government has the ability, not always correctly, to articulate a way forward – such as social distancing and self-quarantining. The was a news report recently of a married couple attending a church service in the south where later is was reported that 35 of the members of that church were reported to have been infected with the COVID-19. The original couple were not tested for the virus and by attending the church service obviously violated the social distancing mandate. I use the term mandate as it is a reasonable request, made by government, to reduce the spread of the virus.

By the way, it was reported over the weekend that 6 people of the 35 reported cases of COVID arising from that on church service have died.

YES, we need government.

As for you comment on statistics, I believe your statement is backwards. It should read 9 out of 10 statistics are correct – which is likely to be true.

As I stated above, I am not a libertarian. I have found that most libertarians, when asked if they are a libertarian are hard pressed to give a really good answer as to why they are a libertarian except to say well, I don’t like government.

“Government has the ability, not always correctly, to articulate a way forward – such as social distancing and self-quarantining.”

I’m not a libertarian either — I’m a classic liberal, who believes the proper role of government is to protect the person and property of each individual (as against “the good of all”) — but you certainly don’t need government for what I quoted from your comment above: “to articulate a path forward for social distancing and self-quarantine.” Humans without any government are perfectly capable of articulating and figuring out just such a path, and indeed they already were, before government got involved. I will be very happy to debate this point, beginning with the earliest articles I’ve written on the subject of Covid-19, as I would welcome the opportunity to debate this point: why is there not equal concern and compassion for the hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken humans across the globe who will die of hunger caused by the famines, which these government-mandated lockdowns have unleashed? Why is there not thousands and thousands of mainstream articles and broadcasts each day about this horrific suffering? Why?

The reason I, like all classic liberals, believe in a minimal government is because humans when left free flourish and prosper, and human freedom is not a permission but a birthright.

And, no, my comment on statistics is not backwards but precisely as I meant it.

As I wrote in a previous post:

It is naïve to think that people won’t adapt to a threat, real or perceived.

It’s equally naive to think that businesses won’t either — including shutting their doors, if they deem it most prudent, or if the customers determine it by their voluntarily deciding not to go out for drinks or food, entertainment or recreation, because they have concerns about the health and safety of themselves and their family — just as people already were doing without needing a government mandate; just as businesses deemed “essential” already have and just as businesses deemed “non-essential” already were before state-forced lockdown made it illegal.

The more you treat human beings like helpless babies, the more human beings will expect to be treated this way — and therefore the greater the growing dependency on that monstrous leviathan known as the state, which is by definition an agency of force and as such cannot spend a single penny unless it first either taxes, borrows, or prints: until in a very short time, there is no end to the things that people, even once self-reliant people, come to expect the state (rather than voluntary transactions and peaceful exchanges among humans) to provide for everyone — all in exchange for your and my inalienable right to life and property, and that of course includes the limitless ingenuity and progress and health and wealth and civilization brought about by conditions of freedom and the protection of our inalienable rights.

There is a very specific reason that all societies governed predominantly by authoritarian states exist in widespread poverty and complete suppression of the individual’s rights, as there is a precise reason that all societies governed by a predominately laissez-faire state have, exactly to that extent, flourished and freed the individual.

Freedom once gone is gone forever.

This is why you MUSTMUSTMUST stand up against this unprecedented power-grab, and the propaganda campaign that largely fueled it. Even if you’re perfectly okay with the state now having this kind of power over this particular thing, realize there is no longer any check on it: it was decreed by executive order, and that power is automatically unchecked, and horribly dangerous. Think of that unchecked power turning, for no reason or just cause, against something (or someone) you hold dear — because I promise you that it is only a matter of time before this unleashed power-source spreads into other areas. Power and bureaucracy once established are impossible to retrogress away from, and there is already a growing chorus of voices calling for no return to normal — which was hardly laissez-faire anyway, though much closer than this current cataclysm.

There is the threat of a virus, and this virus and the destruction caused by it are real and should never be taken lightly, but rather with measured and serious precautions — precautions which a free society with a free people rationally informed (by, for instance, the testing kits that the CDC bureau made illegal in favor of their own broken junk) are best equipped to handle — just as we should take seriously any influenza or other potential epidemic.

The dangers should not, however, be overblown, and neither should we be lied to, nor yanked around like puppets by bureaucratic puppet-masters who are philosophically bankrupt, so that the “cure” creates greater destruction (by far) than the disease. There has unquestionably been fear-mongering and outright prevarications, and it is an outrage and, in my opinion, a total scandal which, in the name of science and scientific integrity, should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law that Neil Ferguson, the corrupt scientist largely responsible for the onset of this hysteria proper, still refuses to show anyone his thirteen-year-old computer code which he used to make his outlandish predictions about Covid-19. There has been a definite propaganda-machine behind much of the catastrophizing — a machine promoting misinformation, exaggeration, hysteria, and panic, and there has unquestionably been a huge governmental power-play as a result of that machine and the fear it thereby spawned and which the majority of people are permitting in total acquiescence to the whipped-up fear. Not even the New York Times, once the most admired and venerable newspaper in the United States, if not the world, now denies this — in large measure because they, too, bought into it.

COVID19 doesn’t exist, at least not as a “virus”. The pathogen itself is the vaccine. The vaccine contains genetic material that hinders your immune system (think AIDS) and allows SM102 lipid encapsulated synthetic DNA fragments to transcribe into the genome of your body, altering your genetics forever. It also contains nanotechnology that self-assembles inside of the bodies of the people injected. Morgellon fibers, which are thinner than a human hair and virtually invisible without an ultraviolet light, move through the body and deposit genetic material. One of the things that the shots do is cause the sebum of your pores to glow orange when illuminated with a 365nm UV flashlight and dark filter. You can see what it looks like on twitter @healgodskids.