Took a bit for this to sink in

 A couple of my statistician friends, former Pfizer colleagues, posted this cartoon on their Facebook pages yesterday:

I showed it to Barry and for the likes of us we just could not figure it out. Then, suddenly this morning I looked at it again and I finally got it. Spoiler alert: if you want to think about it a bit you should stop reading now.

Here is what I think it is trying to say. Every year, we hear horrible stories about people being attacked by sharks. The wide popularity of the 1975 movie, “Jaws,” certainly added to the impression that such attacks were rather frequent. But the reality is somewhat different, according to the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File (emphasis mine):

The 2019 worldwide total of 64 confirmed unprovoked cases were lower than the most recent five-year (2014-2018) average of 82 incidents annually. There were five fatal shark attacks this year, two of which were confirmed to be unprovoked. This number is in line with the annual global average of four fatalities per year.

 So far, there have been over 318,000 fatalities in the United States and 1,700,000 worldwide from infection with COVID-19. Yet many who may be nervous to swim at a beach are comfortable ignoring the threat of this infection. The point of the cartoon is that the statistician understands that she is much less likely to be fatally attacked by a shark than by coronavirus. Why was that not immediately obvious to me? I think it was because I did not quite appreciate that those little round spiked objects were supposed to represent coronavirus. Call me dense, I guess I am.

So, I urge everyone to continue to do everything you can to avoid beaches where sharks have been seen, and to avoid infection with COVID-19.

Stay safe and well.

Love,                                                           

Rebecca