Mike will start by considering some unusual numbers given recently in the press and whether we can believe them or not. He will show you how you can ask sensible questions about numbers to help you decide if the numbers are believable. Before you accept a number, say to yourself WHOA!
Why I am being given this number?
How was it calculated?
Other data available that it can be compared with?
Accuracy. How well is this number estimated?
Four years ago, IMikewas invited to join the Government Public Data Advisory Group (PDAG). It was the group’s job to critique slides prepared by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) for the Cabinet Office. These slides were used by Professor Chris Whitty, the Government Chief Medical Officer in the regular evening television broadcasts to the country on the Covid-19 crisis. It was only when Mike joined this group that he appreciated how the data were gathered and presented.
The remainder of the talk will cover questions such as: how would you know how many cases of Covid-19 there were in the country? How do you know that people who died with respiratory symptoms had Covid-19? How many deaths might have been caused by Covid-19 only indirectly, for example because people were reluctant to go to hospital during lockdown?
For international comparisons, which are important to see whether the UK dealt with the epidemic well, the number of excess deaths per head of the population is used. Excess deaths are deaths from any cause over and above what might be ‘expected’ without the pandemic. Their big advantage is that they don’t require Covid-19 testing. Some countries even achieved
negative excess deaths because lockdown meant people were not dying from, say, road accidents. Mike will consider excess deaths by different country to discover, after four years, where the UK came in the international ranking for coping with Covid-19. He will finish with some suspicious statistics on Covid-19 vaccination rates.
Emeritus Professor Mike Campbell, University of Sheffield