2020 was OFF THE CHARTS

“But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded.” — Edmund Burke

2020 was a calamitous year like no other since we were in the throes of the Second World War. It featured a numbers-heavy news cycle that included a global pandemic, an economic deep freeze, record gyrations in the stock markets and a chaotic U.S. presidential election.

And while most of us would be inclined to write off 2020 as an “annus horribilis,” the numbercrunchers and the numerically inclined among us had a banner year — with the near fetishization of COVID math and its logarithmic curves, a plethora of largely incomprehensible economic indicators, and even the numerical arcaneness of the U.S. Electoral College system.

So let’s put some of this under a statistical microscope and have a look under the hood at some of the more meaningful, provocative and head-scratching numbers churned out in 2020.

Perhaps its apropos to start with the pandemic, and Bloomberg’s “COVID Resilience Ranking” system — an index that involved crunching 10 key metrics (e.g., testing capabilities, infection rates, etc.) for the largest economies, in order to determine which countries handled the virus “most effectively with the least amount of disruption to business and society.”

Not surprisingly, Canada did well, ranking 13th of 53, and second best in the G-7 — well ahead of the U.S. which has astonishingly accounted for nearly 19 per cent of worldwide COVID deaths while being home to only 4.2 per cent of the world’s population.

Climate change continued its unrelenting progression in 2020, which was on track to be one of the three hottest years on record. And that despite a seven per cent drop in carbon dioxide emissions due to the pandemic lockdown and lower industrial activity. A meteorological gong goes to Verkhoyasnk, a town of about 1,000 people in northern Russia, which set a record for the highest temperature ever recorded within the Arctic Circle — hitting an astonishing 38 C in June.

On the economic front, the pandemic restrictions and lockdowns set the Canadian economy on a wild ride in 2020, with several historical statistical milestones breached. The “economy” — i.e., the gross domestic product — suffered an historic contraction in the spring only to post a record rise in the third quarter, with economic growth hitting a jaw-dropping annualized rate of 40.5 per cent. All told by the end of September, Canada’s economy had recovered to nearly 95 per cent of its PRE-COVID levels, with 80 per cent of the lost jobs restored.

Of course, the massive increase in government debt — the result of a bailout package intended to attenuate the worst effects of the induced economic deep freeze — has become a significant issue. Especially so, when it comes to the federal government incurring a budget deficit on track to exceed $350 billion this fiscal year. This will increase the net federal debt-to-gdp ratio (a statistic which enables comparisons to be made between what a nation produces and what it owes) from the lowest in the

G-7 at 31 per cent to well over 50 per cent. (Note: Canada’s federal debt-to-gdp ratio was in the mid60 per cent range as recently as the late 1990s – and that without a pandemic or recession.)

Accelerating budget deficits and economic duress aside, the pandemic has not meant economic hardship for everyone. Indeed, as 2020 unfolded, many of the world’s wealthiest individuals, especially those associated with technology, have watched their net worth rise into the pecuniary stratosphere. For example, Jeff Bezos (the founder and CEO of Amazon) had a net worth of US $92.8 billion at the start of the pandemic in March. The latest accounting has it at US $182 billion. Oh, and how much is $182 billion? It is more than twice the wealth of the entire British monarchy.

The demographers also had their moment in 2020 when Statistics Canada announced population growth in the July-september quarter was the slowest in 74 years — mainly the result of travel restrictions and closed borders reducing immigration to a trickle. However, Canada’s population did manage to nudge over the 38-million mark.

It wouldn’t be a complete statistical interrogation of 2020 without some reference to the outgoing president of the United States — he of 25,000-plus falsehoods or misleading statements since his election in 2016. Yes, this is the same guy who has played nearly 300 rounds of golf since becoming president, costing taxpayers an estimated US $142 million for flights to and from Mar-a-lago and assorted golf courses, including the beefed up security that it all entailed.

But oh, there is also the delicious numerical symmetry of his losing the Electoral College in November by exactly the same 306-232 count as his win over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Joe Biden, buoyed by the highest voter turnout in at least 100 years, won the popular vote by an impressive seven millionplus votes vs. Clinton’s 2.8 million margin in 2016.

And finally, this year’s wild-eyed extrapolation award goes to Ken Paxton, the hapless Texas attorney general who appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to cancel several million votes in four states in an effort to reverse the results of the election.

His “evidence” centred around an analysis by an economist who had previously donated to Donald Trump’s campaign, and who had concluded that based on 2016 election data, there was “less than a one in a quadrillion (a thousand trillion) chance Biden could have won all four states in the 2020 election.”

This was a statistical sleight of hand that failed to take into account that Biden did not receive the same number of votes in this year’s election as Clinton did in 2016, but actually garnered over 15 million more. It is also absurd to assume any presidential aspirant could be expected to receive the same number of votes as a candidate did in a previous election.

And this just in: The Royal Statistical Society’s “International Statistic of the Year 2020” is 332, which is the number of days that elapsed between scientists publishing the genetic sequence of COVID-19 and an effective vaccine being administered.

Alex Roberts is an economic historian who lives in Halifax.