“Surely not!” protested the old lady. “Why, I’d rather have measles in the house ten times, or whooping-cough either, than scarlet fever once.”
“You’re about ten times as likely to have.”
She looked puzzled. “But what did you mean by saying that one of ‘em is as bad as the other?”
“That it’s as dangerous to the community, though not to the individual.”
“Just a little deep for me, too,” confessed Mr. Clyde.
“Yet it’s perfectly simple. Here, take an example. Would you rather be bitten by a rattlesnake or a mosquito?”
“A mosquito, of course.”
“Naturally. Yet a rattlesnake country is a good deal safer than a mosquito country. You wouldn’t hesitate, on account of your health, to move to Arizona, where rattlesnakes live?”
“I suppose not.”
“But you would be afraid to establish your family in the malarious swamps of the South?”