The way you present numbers can get through to some people.

I have been struggling to get a neighbor to appreciate the severity of the pandemic here in the U.S. She was planning to get her hair (cut and dye) and nails (mani-pedi of course) done this week. She's also reluctantly wearing a mask when she's required to. Will not wear one if it is optional.

Finally dawned on me that this was a person who can't really internalize either raw numbers or percentages. 80,000 sounds low to her in a population of 328 million, and .03% sounds positively minuscule. So I flipped the calculation and presented ratios instead.

When I pointed out that on April 15, approximately one in about 540 Americans had tested positive for the virus and about one in 12,600 had died from it, I got her attention. When I then told her that as of today, approximately one in 240 had tested positive and one in 4,000 had died...a drastic reduction that happened in less than a month, I blew her mind.

You and I know these numbers are probably much worse, but I'm going with what is being reported publicly.

Now fortunately, she is someone who already appreciated that testing was probably nowhere near where it could be (should be in my opinion), and she isn't so far down the right wing rabbit hole that she believes medical examiners are being forced to over-count COVID-19 deaths. I'm not sure those folks could ever be reached.

Ratios look like odds to many people. When numbers are presented that way and seen as increasing odds over a short period of time, it appears some people can be reached. She asked if my offer for a few handmade masks was still open. No clue if she's going to embrace her encroaching natural arctic blonde like I am at the moment.