That's fair. Personally I prefer to pick up live animals in person when possible. But that's not an option for everyone and live animals have been shipped since the advent of the postal system.
I do not believe that the post office would continue to ship day old chicks if the mortality rate...
Where do you get these numbers? I don't have any statistics handy myself but those numbers sound far to high to me. I feel like if that were true they probably wouldn't allow shipping through the usps. I have only ordered chicks a handful of times, but I have rarely lost more than one or two...