RICHARD ORD: Axe-wielding maniacs in hockey masks can have their uses...

Obviously there will be some resistance to having blood-drenched axe-wielders roaming the ready-meal aisle of Morrisons, but that’s the snowflakes for you.

I mean, the chances of becoming a victim of a serial killer is about 99.99%. What’s all the fuss about? It’s even lower in the North East.

You’ve got more chance of winning the lottery than you have of ending up being dinner number seven for a murderous cannibal. Better off just turning a blind eye and getting on with the more important things in life, like watching football and drinking beer in packed bars.

And that, I suggest, is the problem of basing arguments purely on one spurious statistic, which a number of irate Facebook users have been touting just recently on our newspaper sites when it comes to coronavirus .

The Fumebook user argument goes something like this.

“Why are we running SCARED of coronavirus when it only kills (add very small number here)% of the population. Open the pubs now.”

A unverified ‘survival rate’ figure of 99.6% is often touted too, invariably followed by angry face emojis.

That 99.6% is far lower than the chance of being harvested by a swivel-eyed killer with a chainsaw, so perhaps we should release them onto the streets too or, at least, ask the police to stop hunting them down.

While there appear to be few plus points on letting the coronavirus run wild with fewer or no restrictions, letting murderous maniacs onto the streets has many.

For a start, the chainsaw and hockey mask-making cottage industries would receive a welcome shot in the arm and, with Halloween looming, the proliferation of psychos on the streets would make for lively viewing given the paucity of Big Screen movies at the moment.

And even though the chances of being skewered on the end of a whaling harpoon are minimal, the move to let blood-thirsty maniacs loose would at least keep people indoors and, thus, lower the coronavirus R-rate.

It’s time to think out of the box. You wanna hear my solution to dog fouling...