The Case Against Discussing John McCain's Health

And it's not political. It's just reasonable.

Given his previous skin cancer but otherwise relatively healthy life, we know John McCain's chances of surviving the next 5-10 years peak out at around 2/3 or 67%.

No matter how unhealthy he really is, he's been going around campaigning just about as hard as I could for a year now, so he's got to be reasonably healthy. Say his chances bottom out at around 1/3, or 33%.

So if McCain's chances of survival are between 1/3 and 2/3, that means that the merits of his VP choice are absolutely on the table, but that his death is not to be regarded as certain. And no matter how much else we know or jockey around with when it comes to McCain's health, that previous sentence won't change. So I think everybody should cut the guy a little slack on the health issue.