Day 67: COVID-19 Numidiocy

 

We’re #1! Not a distinction for which the US was looking. And it might not be true anyway if we had a clear picture of what is going on in the world’s most populous country — China. (Or is it India, now?) And we are not #1 on the “misery index” (yet).

I start today with a confession that I am a numidiot. I described numidiocy yesterday as “whenever numbers get so numerous that it ceases to convey clear and useful information.” @markcamp gently reminded me that the problem is not in the numbers it is in ourselves — our ability to order and interpret them. And, of course, he is correct. And herein lies the story of my own numidiocy.

Look at the chart below:

This is from the 91-DIVOC website I mentioned yesterday. I love these charts but it was irritating that when I wanted to see a graphic of the countries high on what I call the “misery index” (Cases/1 Million population) and focus only on the top ten (as the 91-DIVOC site permits) it was highlighting Vatican City (Holy See), San Marino, Andorra, etc. None of the heavy hitters — Italy, Spain, USA — were to be seen. And the reason was that 91-DIVOC draws it data from Worldometer.com which was displaying that data in tabular form at the time like this:

The calculations were accurate but inconvenient. Inconvenient in the sense that I wanted the graphical focus to be on populous locations as a means of comparing what was going on in those countries of more relevance to our experience in the US. And an event about a week ago had primed me to doubt entries in the Cases/1 Million population column: Somebody hacked the Worldometers site and inserted data for Vatican City that were extremely and ludicrously high. The website posted an apology for the hack and the data was corrected. Except that at various times as I would scroll through the tables sorted by total cases I would come upon the Vatican with its 4 cases and see the “misery index” at near 5,000 and dismissed it as some artifact of the hack that somehow hadn’t been cleaned up. Except, of course, it wasn’t an artifact as one can see when you do the sort above that pushes places with small populations to the top of the list.

And you may ask yourself how can the total cases for these places be so small and the “misery index” so high? Well, its based on how we massage the numbers, not the numbers themselves. What I call the “misery index” was a ratio created to try and compare the significance of the outbreak in countries with different populations, i.e., normalizing for population. This is helpful when cases climbed into five digits as a means of comparing how different populations are experiencing the outbreak. Thus even as we speak while the US has more total cases than Italy our “misery index” nationally is 260 compared to Italy’s at 1,333. Spain’s index of 1,370 is higher than Italy even with ~20,000 fewer cases. To the first order this suggests that Spain is in greater national distress with fewer cases than either Italy or the US, while the US is in significantly less national distress than Italy or Spain even with more persons affected by the disease.

But this begs the question of whether Vatican City is about 20 times worse off than the US? Well, of course it isn’t. Which is why I was irritated to have my lovely 91-DIVOC graph messed up with these high index countries whose index was so high simply because the ratio is multiples of the cases you have rather a fraction of them as in other countries. The formula for the “misery index” is Total Cases divided by the product of the division of a given population by 1,000,000. In other words, when the given population is less than a million you end up with an index value of some multiple of the total cases. So, for Vatican City, 4 total cases converted to an index value of 4,944 because Vatican City’s population is less than 1/1000 of 1,000,000. And so on and so forth with San Marino, Andorra, etc.

My numidiocy was driven by my interpretation of the index. The index was simply an index. The math works the way it works. We give meaning to the relationships. The index isn’t even really a “misery index”; that is just a catchy phrase (in my own mind). The numbers do not in and of themselves tell you the severity of illness within the populations, the level of emotions (fear and sorrow) that are being experienced in a particular locale within the indexed countries.

We are going to see a lot of numidiocy in the coming days as we try to sort out the path forward. That is because the meaning of numbers, not the math itself, requires interpretation. And getting agreement on interpretation may be difficult. I stumbled because of something I wanted; something of which the numbers were getting in the way. A lot of people are going to want the numbers to prove all sorts of things. There will be disputes. There will be uncertainty. But there will also be destiny. And, in the end, there will be numbers to describe what happened, if not why.

[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]

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  1. OldPhil Coolidge
    OldPhil
    @OldPhil

    Ralphie (View Comment):

    OldPhil (View Comment):

    EHerring (View Comment):

    I guess they are going to add Zaandam to the chart. 4 dead. No port will accept them. Transferring healthy passengers to Rotterdam off coast of Panama. Mostly retired passengers. My last cruise was on the Zaandam.

    A couple from our community left January 5 for a 42-day cruise to the South Pacific, New Zealand, Australia and ending in Hong Kong. He was keeping us updated on Facebook. Those plans took a hit in the Aus/NZ portion, they never went to Hong Kong, were re-routed to Indonesia and some other places, hit Ceylon, around India and were heading for the Red Sea and maybe Greece and then home, they thought. They ended up a couple days ago in Dubai, where there were only 89 passengers left along with 450 crew. They were still claiming to be having a great time, but finally were let off yesterday, had a 27-hour flight to Newark with a refueling stop in Madrid. Got home last night at 7:30 after an 82-day long 42 day cruise.

    Their daughter left them a kitchen table covered with booze, munchies and a roll of toilet paper.

    Would make a good book or movie. keep us informed.

    We were out walking today and stopped to talk with them. Passengers started to leave the boat in Australia, but these two wanted to get closer to home to avoid a long plane flight (i.e., from the eastern Pacific to LA, then to the east Coast). Then the ship started heading the other way, so they were kind of stuck and ended up with the 27-hour plane trip. Said it was wonderful the last two weeks, because with fewer than 100 passengers they were all treated like royalty; food, drink, entertainment, etc. Plus they have an incredible amount of vouchers for future trips.

    • #31
  2. EHerring Coolidge
    EHerring
    @EHerring

    OldPhil (View Comment):
    Not sure of the ship. It was a Viking Cruise. 

    Amsterdam is Holland America. It was on a “grand voyage” around the world but ran out of ports that would allow them in despite having no sick people. Australia finally let them fly home from there. We drive to Ft Lauderdale for cruises and thus take all the luggage we want. Having my cruise end in another country where amount of checked baggage is limited and costly would be a nightmare.

    • #32
  3. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Steven Seward (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Vatican City is 20 times worse off than the US, in terms of the proportion of cases. You should not dismiss this. This should inform your understanding of how few reported cases there are in the US.

    When you look at the US number in your post — 85,906 — that sounds like a lot. But it is only 260 per million. Except that most people probably don’t intuitively understand how small 206 per million actually is.

    It means that if you select 1,000 people at random from the US population, you would expect to find zero — yes, zero — who had tested positive. (You would expect 0.26 of a person, mathematically, but people don’t come in fractions.)

    If you picked 10,000 Americans at random, and filled a basketball arena with them, you would expect to find 2-3 who had tested positive.

    It is quite possible that vastly more people have the disease, or have already had it and recovered, than the reported figure. But we don’t know that. We only know the number reported as having tested positive. It is a tiny number.

    I have been struck by how incredibly small the infection rates actually are, even in the worst countries. They are still small even if you multiply them by 10 times. When I see people estimate that 40% – 80% of the entire U.S. will become infected, as Governor Cuomo said a few days ago, my mind is blown by how they can justify an infection rate tens of thousands of times higher than what we have observed so far.

    I’m sure there are competent epidemiologists out there making more rational projections, but the news media just ignores all of them and publishes the most outlandish prediction they can find, such as the British study that forecast 3 to 4 million American deaths. Makes for terrific headlines.

    the people who say the infection rate will be 40% or higher also support the green new deal

     

    • #33
  4. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    So starting over the last 8 days or so, people are starting to wake up. More and  more mention is being made about how sloppily done the statistics regarding the situation with  COVID 19; there is awareness the WHO officials and others who sold the public and the world of elected authorities the idea this was plague as great as the Spanish flu of 1918 were wrong.

    It is also becoming apparent that the restrictions are expanding and there is no some push back against the restrictions.

    From the comments’ section of a Ben Swann video:

    MRGF78 3 days ago There’s no “in case of an emergency” clause… that shuts down the constitution… if the constitution is suspended, so are their seats… they have NO authority… because it’s the constitution that gives them their authority… our rights aren’t granted by the constitution or our government… our rights are INHERENT and INALIENABLE from GOD our CREATOR… not a gift from government that they can take away from us without our consent… For the public to be facing a virus that has a 0.1 to 0.6% mortality rate against all cases and then the public willingly accepts a totalitarian takeover due to the worthless media hyping the public’s fears, remains far scarier to me than any other thing I can imagine.

    • #34
  5. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Ralphie (View Comment):

    Saw a meme on facebook that the government needs to quit sending trillions of dollars to foreign governments and keep the money here to buy medical equipment. Looked it up spent 50 billion last year and 39 billion budgeted this year.

    People generally overestimate the percent of spending that the military and foreign aid comprise.

    Most people I know have said at one time or another they don’t know why anyone needs to learn algebra; they’d never need it. Same people who are trying to understand calculus today. We live in a world explained by calculus, it is always changing.

    Math skills are desperately needed, but for some reason, it is being decided that our  6 to 12 year olds need hours of classroom instruction on whether or not they may be gender confused. (A very sorry state of affairs.)

    I would like to see money sent overseas kept here and returned to taxpayers. If allowed to just sit inside the US Treasury, some Congress people  would just see it is spent on surveillance.  Plus much of what goes overseas ends up inside some inner circle of US officials. (Consider Pres Clinton and the 20 billions of bucks he gifted the Mexican bankers with. Does anyone here really think that the Clintons did not get some type of “finder’s fee” for offering that money?)

    Also look up BARDA, the Fed agency in charge of overseeing pandemics, especially influenza and SARS-like illness outbreaks. (COVID 19 is being considered a “SARS-like virus.”)

    BARDA gets money every year from  us, and has gotten those monies since it’s inception back in the Aughts. So how come no ventilators? How come no face masks? Was most of BARDA’s allotments spent on the officials at the agency hosting “pandemic seminars” in Bali or what?

    And BARDA is just one of a myriad of Fed and state agencies that receive monies from us for help with pandemics and health crisis situations. We taxpayers should at least require their seminars are all held jointly, to cut down on the costs.

     

     

    • #35
  6. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    Ralphie (View Comment):

    Saw a meme on facebook that the government needs to quit sending trillions of dollars to foreign governments and keep the money here to buy medical equipment. Looked it up spent 50 billion last year and 39 billion budgeted this year.

    People generally overestimate the percent of spending that the military and foreign aid comprise.

    Most people I know have said at one time or another they don’t know why anyone needs to learn algebra; they’d never need it. Same people who are trying to understand calculus today. We live in a world explained by calculus, it is always changing.

    Math skills are desperately needed, but for some reason, it is being decided that our 6 to 12 year olds need hours of classroom instruction on whether or not they may be gender confused. (A very sorry state of affairs.)

    I would like to see money sent overseas kept here and returned to taxpayers. If allowed to just sit inside the US Treasury, some Congress people would just see it is spent on surveillance. Plus much of what goes overseas ends up inside some inner circle of US officials. (Consider Pres Clinton and the 20 billions of bucks he gifted the Mexican bankers with. Does anyone here really think that the Clintons did not get some type of “finder’s fee” for offering that money?)

    Also look up BARDA, the Fed agency in charge of overseeing pandemics, especially influenza and SARS-like illness outbreaks. (COVID 19 is being considered a “SARS-like virus.”)

    BARDA gets money every year from us, and has gotten those monies since it’s inception back in the Aughts. So how come no ventilators? How come no face masks? Was most of BARDA’s allotments spent on the officials at the agency hosting “pandemic seminars” in Bali or what?

    And BARDA is just one of a myriad of Fed and state agencies that receive monies from us for help with pandemics and health crisis situations. We taxpayers should at least require their seminars are all held jointly, to cut down on the costs.

    You would think that an expensive crisis would put Congress in a mood to curtail gratuitous spending and failed programs but instead they seem to be doubling down on unaccountable, gratuitous wasteful crap, like a 400-pound heart-attack victim hitting ice cream and pizza parlors on the way home from the ER.

     

     

    • #36
  7. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):

    Ralphie (View Comment):

    Saw a meme on facebook that the government needs to quit sending trillions of dollars to foreign governments and keep the money here to buy medical equipment. Looked it up spent 50 billion last year and 39 billion budgeted this year.

    People generally overestimate the percent of spending that the military and foreign aid comprise.

    Most people I know have said at one time or another they don’t know why anyone needs to learn algebra; they’d never need it. Same people who are trying to understand calculus today. We live in a world explained by calculus, it is always changing.

    Math skills are desperately needed, but for some reason, it is being decided that our 6 to 12 year olds need hours of classroom instruction on whether or not they may be gender confused. (A very sorry state of affairs.)

    I would like to see money sent overseas kept here and returned to taxpayers. If allowed to just sit inside the US Treasury, some Congress people would just see it is spent on surveillance. Plus much of what goes overseas ends up inside some inner circle of US officials. (Consider Pres Clinton and the 20 billions of bucks he gifted the Mexican bankers with. Does anyone here really think that the Clintons did not get some type of “finder’s fee” for offering that money?)

    Also look up BARDA, the Fed agency in charge of overseeing pandemics, especially influenza and SARS-like illness outbreaks. (COVID 19 is being considered a “SARS-like virus.”)

    BARDA gets money every year from us, and has gotten those monies since it’s inception back in the Aughts. So how come no ventilators? How come no face masks? Was most of BARDA’s allotments spent on the officials at the agency hosting “pandemic seminars” in Bali or what?

    And BARDA is just one of a myriad of Fed and state agencies that receive monies from us for help with pandemics and health crisis situations. We taxpayers should at least require their seminars are all held jointly, to cut down on the costs.

    You would think that an expensive crisis would put Congress in a mood to curtail gratuitous spending and failed programs but instead they seem to be doubling down on unaccountable, gratuitous wasteful crap, like a 400-pound heart-attack victim hitting ice cream and pizza parlors on the way home from the ER.

     

    in times of crisis, government should deregulate everything.  look at how things improved once the FDA and CDC got out of the way

     

    • #37
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