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0 pointsbgarbiak5y ago0 comments

If you touch a parcel a second time then the first time doesn't count to anything. It's 1/10k again. It's like with a lottery: you can buy a coupon every day for years and win nothing, because every draw resets your chances.

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cortic5y ago· 1 in thread

48 million to one lottery odds, running everyday I'd expect to win once in the next 131,506 years (48m/356). -this is why you don't win for 'years'. I'd also expect one winner for every 48 million players in a day.

Now a 1/10k taken twice is 2/10k, so taken 14 thousand times it is 14k/10k. Okay so this isn't technically how you add statistics, but its close enough to see the utility in washing items.

bgarbiakOP5y ago

The are lotteries with bigger chances, but in all of them some numbers will be repeated over the years, and yours may never occur. You would have to use all possible combination for one draw to be sure. That's why it's not unusual to have draws without winner, sometimes a few in a row.

It's a flawed analogy, I admit, but with the parcel you would have to palpate its entire surface and lick the finger after every touch to infect yourself. Just touching it for the second time doesn't double the chance of infection. You may touch the same uncontaminated part you'd touched already (crossing the same numbers twice), the number of virus particles you've moved might not be enough to infect you, that you might have washed your hands in between the touches, and so on... Obviously, the more you "interact" with an item the chances grow, but certainly not as fast as you suggest. Add a time limit to all of that, and the fact that for every next item it's all back to 1/10k (second draw) - practically there's no way this number will ever grow over 1/1.

Excuse the non-fact-checked argument as I can't find a link now but I recently read that couriers and mailmen actually get ill less often than factory workers (and most of them caught the virus via airborne transmission). I don't mind if you wash everything you bring home from outside, but I don't see point in that, and certainly I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. It's wiser to focus on preventing airborne transmission than to waste time and efforts on avoiding the least probable risk.