Living Life is all about percentages

Roses are red, violets are blue, the Bat flu is back, here's my review........ Don't forget to click the pics.

Pretty yellow wildflowers.

I'm absolutely terrible at math, but despite that, percentages still make sense to me; after all, percentages are what makes Las Vegas casino owners rich, and the lack of understanding percentages is what bankrupts some of their customers. There's a certain percentage of people killed in plane crashes this year, but the odds are I'll be okay. A certain percentage of people will win the lottery this year, but chances are excellent it won't be me. So when it comes to dealing with the Bat flu, the percentages are the most important will thing I've got going for me.

And even though the percentages are in my favor, I can increase my percentages of not getting the bat flu by......

Getting my shots. Check

Not being overweight. Check.

By not having any serious health problems. Check.

By taking vitamin D, which I've done for decades. Check.

Limiting my time around crowds if I can help it, Walmart comes to mind. Check.

And by staying in places where the population and the incidence of the Bat flu are low, for instance, you won't see me heading for Los Angeles or New York City anytime soon..... Make that ever. Check.

But like I said, those things won't prevent me from getting the Bat flu, but they will decrease my chances which helps my percentage.

So now that I'll soon be facing another winter on the road, probably sometime around mid-October, I've got to decide how to handle the new variant Bat flu percentages. And the only things I've got to go on are the things that kept me safe last winter, which is using the same local health department's statistics to show what my percentages of getting the Bat flu might be. And for my own sanity,  ignoring all the anecdotal information and speculation one gets on the "news."

I still have a little over a month to go before deciding on where I would like to go, and what I would like to do,  and so far, New Mexico is looking okay. But that doesn't mean it will stay that way since New Mexico has a governor with a propensity for shutting everything down and further harming her already beleaguered state.

But at the moment hospital admissions are dropping, ICU admissions are level, and death rates have dropped dramatically. But despite that, the local TV station headline reports ... "8 new deaths, 914 additional COVID-19 cases"... Without bothering to mention, half those reported cases where people died were over 70, most were in their 80s, almost half had underlying health problems, and completely failing to mention whether or not those people were vaccinated. New Mexico has a little over 2 million people living in it, and at this point in time, there were 396 people hospitalized for Covid out of a population of TWO MILLION.

Arizona statistics are very similar to New Mexico today, their death rate has also been going down dramatically for the last few days, hospital bed use for Covid has leveled off for the last couple of weeks, and is nowhere near bed capacity. ICU bed use is dropping. And out of a population of over seven million people, there are less than 2000 hospitalized today with Covid 19, and Arizona has over 16,000 licensed hospital beds, and more available during emergencies.

And that's why I feel better using statistics than news reports that are heavily biased toward sensationalism or anecdotal evidence from folks that may be well-meaning but might have obtained their information from sources where there could be politics involved.

I, of course, won't be making a final decision on where to go until I see what the current picture is going to look like this Fall, but it's hard to imagine a safer place to be than boondocked out in the desert under the shade of a Saguaro.

                                                                Theboondork

I don't know what kind of wild flowers these are but their stalks are almost 4 feet tall.

Old Colorado log barn. By the looks of it this barn wasn't built by the Amish