When people spend less time collecting unemployment benefits, they stop being recounted again and again in the monthly unemployment survey.

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Recently, McKinsey and Company released a survey claiming that a significant number of employers will stop offering insurance to their workers in 2014.

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In June McKinsey, a consultancy, found in a survey that 30% of firms would definitely or probably stop offering insurance after 2014, when the exchanges are in place.

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Still, two-thirds of respondents in a survey conducted by the market research firm Mintel Group Ltd. said they would stop using their debit card or switch to another issuer if their bank charged a fee.

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The survey found that one in five Americans, and one in four Britons and Australians would stop doing business with a company if it suffered a security breach.

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Which leads to the nub of the issue: it is hard to work out exactly how much damage resistant worms are doing, and thus how much effort should be put into trying to stop the spread of resistance not least because, as Dr Kaplan found out when he conducted his survey, the data are pretty sporadic.

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