© April 9, 2021, the Griot Poet
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
“No, thank you, Mr. President,”
Though we’ve all been on the planet Earth,
During this pandemic,
And lockdown
[Seemed] a reasonable event,
Our attention spans are limited,
Two weeks was more than enough,
We all found out how tough
Teachers’ jobs were,
And how bratty our children are!
Got vaccines: great!
We’re going to open up our states,
Though small percentages of our populations
Are vaccinated,
We’re opening up with a full head of steam,
Filling spring break beaches,
In Miami, Florida,
And Corpus Christi,
“Kansas lawmakers voted Thursday to repeal the
state’s mask mandate despite Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s attempt to extend
it,”
“Arkansas ended their mask mandate Tuesday, and
while the state will allow businesses to impose their [own] restrictions as
well as localities, local orders cannot be enforced.”
Governors in Indiana, Alabama, Utah, Wyoming, Mississippi,
Alaska, South Dakota,
And, Texas, oh Texas!
19 states,
Don’t, or no longer have mask mandates,
Thought experiment:
The current US COVID deaths are 573, 988,
The current US population is 332,494,997,
Or, thereabouts,
Divide the smaller by, the larger,
Multiply by one hundred, you get
0.17%,
Round up to 0.2%,
Now, close your eyes:
You’re on the beach,
At Miami, or Corpus Christi,
100,000 of you are about,
To charge into the ocean,
With the guarantee,
Man-eating sharks,
Like the large white in “Jaws,”
Will devour 0.2% of your flock of 100,000,
Guaranteed,
200 of you WILL become,
“Chicken of the sea,”
Now,
99,800 of you WILL make it,
You have no idea which,
In my best Clint Eastwood,
Dirty Harry shtick:
“Do you feel lucky?”
Or libertarian?
No government will MAKE me get a shot!
No way!
William Wallace! FREE DUMB!
This example is the analogy I give
On which I want you to meditate,
You can’t outrun white sharks
In their oceans,
Or airborne coronavirus,
That has three distinct mutations,
And one double,
The problem is, your 0.2% chance is not zero.
During this pandemic,
I lost two friends,
Maybe to self-identified libertarians,
This loss to you doesn’t seem significant,
But like John Donne: my shore is diminished,
Without them,
Under normal circumstances (and pandemics are
once-in-a-century “not normal”), there’s no libertarian case for this:
Neil deGrasse Tyson said,
Something that should be a cardinal rule:
Your lifting mask mandates,
In your states,
[Makes] as much sense,
As a peeing section,
In a public swimming pool.
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