I was thinking about this a bit, and trying to figure it out to understand the "X.X deaths per million" statistic ...

I remember many years ago my PhD adviser talked about knowing someone who committed suicide, and that since he was older, and know ALOT more people, he knew several suicides while most of his students didn't know any or maybe one....

Anyway, I figured I really know the 100 or so people in my group, plus I know alot of their families, so maybe 200 to 300 I know pretty well. I know everyone in our ward (I'm in the bishopric, so I really work at that), that's another 300 or more people. At work, in my division, I know another 100 to 200 in my division, but not really their families. I know probably another couple hundred from work from various collaborations (I work at a big company -13k employees). so I think I probably know about 1000 people from work. I was on the High Council, so I think I probably know 1000 in our stake after visiting every unit for 6 years or so. Then throw in all my family (cousins and second cousins, and my wife and her cousins and second cousins and nieces and nephews) that is at least another 100 or more...

Anyway ... I think I can get 2500 or more people that I could recognize as someone I have really interacted with and more or less "know" ... and probably alot more that I have met briefly but don't really know anything about..... And I know alot of other people who are way more outgoing and meet way more people than I do ...

So, if you assume that each of those 2500 or so also know at least 1000 people (probably not all unique by any means) it's probably not tooo hard to get to 50K people in one degree of separation ... I know someone who knows someone....

So getting to a million is probably three degrees of separation ...

If you throw in people who you virtually know ... everyone here on cougarboard, or other message boards ... everyone on your facebook feed (which I am not into, but my kids are)

Anyway ... I think it is getting pretty likely to be able to say ... I know someone who knows someone .... and really get to big numbers .... which means knowing someone who is sick is really really likely, and knowing someone who died is pretty likely.

Anyway, .... what do you think ... what is your number of people who you "Know" when you say "I know someone who sick from COVID"?