Merry Christmas!

Well, don't make it too merry.

Or you'll die.

In fact, according to the Post:

Every time you listen to Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," about five people have died of the virus between the beginning and the end of the song.

In case you didn't know, "Deaths per White Christmas" is a typical standard used throughout the medical community. You have probably run across it on CDC charts before.

It certainly wasn't meant at all to be a guilt trip regarding your Christmas plans.

Stop being so paranoid.

Writer Philip Bump helpfully notes the typical course a Covid illness takes for those of you who did not major in philosophy. (All emphases mine.)

By now, the pattern is familiar. People feel sick and get a test. It comes back positive. Some of them end up seeking treatment at a hospital. Some of them then die.

I personally had no idea that that is how an illness progresses. I was under the impression that sometimes you first die, then you feel sick, and then you go to the hospital.

I'm really glad he cleared that up for me because that could have been really embarrassing.

For the sake of thoroughness, Bump points out that you need to take into account the fact that time exists.

There are gaps between those events: Someone who tests positive today may not die for several weeks. But the link is clear.

Make no mistake about it, when you contract a potentially deadly illness, and then later die from that illness, you have died from that illness.

Unless there was some other illness involved but we're not supposed to notice that so make sure to cover your eyes and hum softly to yourself whenever someone starts talking about that.

To finish the point (and keep in mind we're still in the same paragraph), Bump sums it up.

People contract the virus. Some of them take a turn for the worse. Some of them don't survive.

Later in the piece, Bump realizes he might not have quite driven his point home.

Again, some of those hospitalizations eventually become deaths. Each of the key metrics — new cases, hospitalizations, new deaths — has followed the same curve over the past three months.

Oh, so you can die from a potentially deadly illness. I missed that the first three times he said it.

That there are people who are particularly vulnerable to Covid, a well-defined group who need to take special precautions as opposed to the vast majority of Americans, and possibly the most important thing you need to know if you really wanted to create an informed public and reduce fatalities did not seem to interest Bump.

I guess he felt it was much more important that you understand the normal progression of a disease.

Finally, Bump includes a handy counter at the end of the article that literally counts how many people have died since you first opened the article.

So, just to review:

Don't worry about who is vulnerable, you should all be equally terrified all the time and you're going to die.

(Language warning)