Category: China Flu

….how you broke my heart.
If I stay here just a little bit longer
If I stay here, won’t you listen to my heart?
Oh, my heart

Here’s an unscientific test; do you personally know anyone who has died in the last two years? Lets limit the scope to someone who you’ve spoken to at least once in the last five years.

Same question, but someone who’s had an unexpected medical condition or diagnosis?

How about suicides or suicide attempts?

Does it feel like the number of people falling in these anecdotal categories has increased recently? Does it make you ask any questions?

Maybe it’s not just anecdotal:

Excess deaths 13% higher.

Suicide rate per capita 9% higher in “world’s most locked down city”.

Have you seen unusual stories like this recently?

21 year old dies suddenly.

If you only consume news from the traditional sources, you might not have seen this highlighted or given much attention:

Rich countries are having more excess deaths than poorer countries. Who had that on their 2023 bingo card?

The lack of journalistic curiosity to not write more articles on this is bordering on being a superpower.

What was the significant factor impacting the rich countries that poorer countries didn’t have? Was it four letters starting with a lower case m?

I don’t know, but perhaps someone might have a look into it? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

How is 13% excess mortality not yesterday’s, today’s, tomorrow’s headline? In what universe is that not the lead story until we learn the reasons?

How are the faces and names of the public health officials of Victoria and their political masters not being plastered over the media until the excess suicide rates have been explained and addressed?

How many times do editors need to write “died suddenly” before they suspect there might be common causes?

Bill’s Opinion

Something is happening here. Let’s be charitable, let’s call it embarrassment. The people with the final decision rights on what story runs each day are embarrassed at how utterly wrong they’ve been on the seriousness of Covid, the morality and effectiveness of lockdown policies and the broken promises of “safe and effective” vaccines.

They bought and regurgitated the government talking points without question. They sent journalists to press conferences with questions such as, “Premier, should you have locked us down earlier and harder?”, or “Minister, shouldn’t you be considering jail for the unvaccinated?”.

It’s a little embarrassing to now admit how completely disastrous and devastating that position has been to the public health, both physically and mentally.

So instead, they are spiking any pieces daring to suggest the Emperor is wearing no clothes.

How do I know this?

The article above about the poor kid in Queensland was written by Alex Blair. I was going to berate him for his lack of curiosity (sub news category “health problems” really?), but then I looked at his Twitter feed. Oh, he’s curious enough all right, he’s just not getting that curiosity published by his editor.

It’s the same story for Frank Chung. Very carefully edited news articles, but his Twitter feed is more free with the questions.

It’d be fascinating to read Alex and Frank’s spiked articles. Perhaps there’s a book’s worth.

As that famous pederast, John Maynard Keynes, once said, “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”.

Well, in the case of editors of our main news outlets, we have the answer; plug our fingers in our ears and sing La La La La.

Level: Jedi Knight

Written by Daniella White, who is also the author of this Numberwang from January, where she misses asking any questions about denominators or the relationship between numbers of Covid tests and positive cases but simply reports government statistics as if they actually meant anything useful.

So, Daniella is clearly one of the intended targets of this article.

People’s poor understanding of statistics resulted in misinformation and “fake news” spreading throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers say, as a study calls for changes to how mathematics is taught in schools.

Schools? Yes, those things we shut down for months at a time.

Australian Catholic University Professor of Mathematics Education Vincent Geiger, who co-authored the research, said more needed to be done to teach students how to critically interpret statistics like those published during the pandemic.

Not just students. Also every media outlet that ever published a percentage without an accompanying denominator, or a case fatality rate without comparing it to the ‘flu and the caveat we don’t test for ‘flu.

“Mathematics and statistics were used in the media like almost never before over COVID-19,” Geiger said.

Yes, we can all agree with that statement., unfortunately.

“What does flattening the curve actually mean?

Yes, we wrote about how the conversation quietly changed about that here, turns out it means whatever we want it to mean and we’ll stop using it as our strategy without telling anyone.

He said schools also needed to do more to help students scrutinise whether sources were credible, and the media should provide links to original sources of statistics and information quoted in articles.

Agreed. It kind of infers the churnalists understand numbers though. Big assumption, there.

Geiger said unless key skills were addressed at school, there was a real danger that students would grow up to be adults at risk of accepting “fake news”.

You see that tall mast disappearing over the horizon? That’s the ship that’s sailed already.

One example was misinterpretation of vaccine effectiveness data. While raw data might show a higher raw number of deaths and infections among the vaccinated population when most people have been vaccinated, the rate of infection and death in unvaccinated people is still higher.

“The numbers may appear simple, but they’re not, they’re what we would call composite variables,” she said.

Oh, I feel this might be a topic to which there will be many unhappy returns this year…..

Bennett said people should defer to the experts in the field to explain data and not necessarily attempt to draw conclusions from statistics for themselves.

Really? Do they have some computer models? They’re always very persuasive and worked out really well for us.

Bill’s Opinion

The fucking chutzpah and irony of a journalist writing an article bemoaning a lack of numeracy and critical thinking.

Anyone who, after the last two and half years, ever again finds themselves reading a data point in a newspaper without assuming it’s 180 degrees incorrect, should consider wearing a sign or some kind of symbol to let the rest of us know to avoid them.

Oh, they do already. It’s called a face mask.