Covid-19 statistics and the question of rational thinking

COVID-19 has raised a serious storm on the terrain of statistics, the leadership of science and rational thinking.

Democracies are in danger from the advent of Big Data, especially when led by those with less empathy to the people they govern and those who are in positions of power but are illiterate.

When illiteracy connects with the wily and less empathetic, the age of information deluge will be catastrophic to societies.

In 2001 Professor Helmut F Spinner of Karlsruhe Institute addressed the Statisticians of the Economic Commission for Europe. In his thesis he discussed the role and interface of statistics and technology.

On the question of knowledge, he made a distinction across three areas of knowledge. The first related to knowledge as ordinarily just information without any epistemological anchor and that would include any amount of fake news.

The second is knowledge as found in works of art and tales. The third form of knowledge is in science and in this space, we encounter public statistics that constitute the science of the state.

Covid-19 has unveiled how citizens across the globe seriously engaged in conversations in the science of Covid.

Many with zero knowledge of medicine were equally engaged. What came right into controversy was the efficacy of vaccines and 28 months later, a number of institutions are pulling back from supporting mandatory vaccines, Standard Bank of South Africa being one of them.

The Supreme Court of the US has ruled partially on vaccine mandates a few days ago. It ruled thus: “The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked President Joe Biden’s vaccine and testing requirement aimed at large businesses, but it allowed a vaccine mandate for certain health-care workers to go into effect nationwide.”

The variable response to Covid19 vaccine feeds into the controversy and challenges in the science of viral diseases, including their attendant conspiracy.

What caught my eye in the midst of all these, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to leave office, was “The Expose”, the headline of which led with: “Whilst you were distracted by Boris resigning, the UK Gov quietly published a report confirming the Vaccinated account for 94% of all Covid-19 deaths since April, 90% of which were triple/quadruple jabbed”.

The data it referred to was from the Office of National Statistics of the UK.

It is a credible office. It showed the number of people who died among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Among those who were vaccinated, there were 4 715 deaths for those who received a triple jab and 4 647 among those with a double jab.

In contradistinction, there were 288 deaths among those who were not vaccinated.

It became good fodder for the fourth estate, which went into overdrive with the headline of Boris Johnson resignation as camouflage that concealed the big scandal of falsehoods of vaccines which are pushed by the Big Pharma.

But what are the facts? In the absence of denominators that point as to how many people were all in all vaccinated and how many were not, The Expose cannot come to a conclusion that the vaccinated are more exposed to death than those who are not vaccinated.

The error of ecological fallacy is commonplace among the uninitiated in the world of numbers and people can be terribly misled.