That would be the case if I was actually doing what's happening in that example.

In practice other constraints on the datasets ensure that the number of reads is in the hundreds if anything.

I would much prefer using a single column to store information in my cases than many separate columns. From an academic perspective a column per value is better but in real life I don't want to have to add a new column to a table, add a new index, return a new column in my result sets, add a new parameter into my stored procedures and anything else I've missed.

The alternative of adding a new bit value starts to look pretty good in that situation. Horses for courses of course.