There’s a saying that I learned back in the 1980s while studying probability, statistics, and mathematical modeling: “Torture numbers enough and they’ll confess to anything.” It was right up there with “correlation does not imply causation” and “GIGO.” (GIGO stands for garbage in, garbage out.)

As most of you know by now, I’ve been skeptical of the catastrophic projections of the expected progression of the WuFlu. I do not think that the figures presented are an intentional “hoax,” though I suspect that some people and institutions, particularly the major media, have an ideological reason to exaggerate the danger. But I suspect that the bigger problem is the limited amount of information presently available, even to the most sophisticated modelers.

I have a new chart today and an update of a prior chart. As before, I’m reporting on South Korea, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, the US, and the UK. Here is a bar chart of the average daily growth rate of reported WuFlu cases, by country, in five-day increments.