Peter McGahan. CEO. Worldwide Financial planning
8/4/2020
Coronavirus data: Facts versus Fear
The purpose of this note is to help you understand and cut through noise to keep your sanity in such extraordinary times.
Cutting through the noise from the unscrupulous politicians, newspapers, or those who unerringly may not know they have interpreted data incorrectly, is vital to your mental health, especially during a Pandemic.
They may not mean to be unkind.
Social distancing is vital. There is no point in running through a petri dish that’s been kept clean for two weeks to have to start again, and again, creating further killers through hunger, stress and depression.
Those who do so may not wish to be unkind, and may not be motivated to do the right thing by being called an ‘idiot’. Consider.
When we understand the ‘why’, and how that why affects our society, we are more likely to do the right thing.
In a recent tweet, a panicked tweeter stated that ‘this was not a time for logic or reasoning, just follow the rules’. Errr.
This is precisely the time for reason and logic. Let me explain.
The retention of our emotional intelligence is vital in terms of ensuring our own wellbeing and making sound choices.
‘After the event’ comments are common, when society looks back to say: “If only I had …..”.
‘If only’ moments are always around us. They are simply masked by clouds of fear.
Disinformation, or misreading information creates fear. Fear makes us weak. It paralyses us, and hands power, and financial power to those who know how to use it.
The Human Givens assesses our nine emotional needs and how essential they are in keeping ourselves mentally healthy. Consider how each of our nine emotional needs are being battered right now in lockdown.
It’s therefore ok to not feel ok. This will pass, but in the meantime it’s important to understand what’s happening around you, and make good choices
Newspapers want to shock you, grab your attention. The ‘global Covid-19 mortality rate per population, being a maximum of 0.001%’, won’t sell a paper.
That’s what it is.
Newspapers often start with outcomes and find logic to back that up. The new acquired logic can be used by politicians et al to back up your need for their existence - almost Munchausen by proxy.
Data can be analysed more intelligently than that, to assess where you truly are, and retain the aforementioned emotional intelligence.
In any assessment, we look at quantitative analysis (loads of numbers), which simply gives us a shortcut to good qualitative (practical) questions.
The process moves back and forth. It’s iterative, ensuring that in a swirling distillation process we come to emotionally reliable droplets of conclusions.
We do it with choosing your investments. The same strategy applies to the current Pandemic, so we don’t panic, argue at home over stress, shout at loved ones, and sell the wrong shares.
The key is to exclude any contamination of confirmation bias in the whole process. I see it a lot. Sentences starting with ‘but surely…’ simply mean: ‘I know the answer and the logic must be wrong’.
The result? You shove a river up a hill to make it fit the narrative.
No. Data on its own is noise. Data with context is information. Experimentation and error gives experience. Information and experience equals knowledge. Knowledge and humility gives us wisdom.
And there is no one as wise as the salmon.
Ask the people of the Faroe Islands in their extraordinary success with Covid-19, and the salmon.
If there is one smidge of confirmation bias in that process you lose. Stay away from the outcome until you get there, and it’s obvious.
The power of what has been loaded onto your brain through what you have been exposed to can be mind-blowing. Resist that.
Looking at our assessments there are a few key points:
Total Tests
Less than 1% of the world has been tested. In the USA its 0.62%, and in the U.K. 0.39%. This makes the data unreliable.
Did we test at the beginning and cordon off like the Faroe Islands (10.3%) with the best test rate in the world, or did we leave it and test as people were coming in very sick.
The outputs from that data will be very different in the next column: ‘confirmed cases per test’.
We mentioned over a month ago that headlines would now read ‘cases soar’. Of course they would. Tests have rocketed, but the top twenty countries in terms of confirmed cases have an average test rate of just 0.8%. As you test more, you find more, but the cases were always there. They are not ‘new’ as the headlines state, it’s just that governments have and still are, testing very poorly.
Confirmed cases per test
A good study is on how many confirmed cases are in relation to total testing. France, at almost one in two (0.48) positive cases per test is the highest with Vietnam at the other end at (0.002).
Vietnam have been exceptionally proactive before the virus spreads, as have South Korea (0.021). If you wait as the UK and USA have done, the fermentation process goes right against the advice of the WHO. “Act fast, with cohesion, coordination. Go after the virus. If you don’t, it will get you”.
New Zealand, Faeroe Islands and South Korea took that advice and applied the required social distancing quickly.
Mortality rate
The final headline is that of the mortality rate. It is unreliable data to assess against confirmed cases.
If you are testing just as sick people are coming into the hospital, the rates are disproportionately high, whilst if its at the beginning before the virus spreads its under control.
Faeroe islands and Vietnam do not have fatalities. There are currently a total 54 countries that do not have fatalities from Covid-19.
Measuring a mortality rate against confirmed cases gives you a wildly inaccurate and tabloid toxic headline. Gambia has a 25% mortality rate and the UK is 11.14%.
This is unreliable, scaremongering and irresponsible.
Gambia had 4 confirmed cases and one person died ‘with’ Covid-19. 25%.
The correct measure is to assess against population and their mortality rate is just 0.00004%. Not a big headline if you sell ‘tabloids’.
For the record, I don’t read them.
The UK’s mortality rate is actually 0.009%.
Ireland 0.004%; USA 0.0038%. Australia 0.00019% (Read that again).
Died with or from
It came to my attention that some readers didn’t see the words ‘with’, or ‘Covid-19 related’ in the papers. Have another read.
Certain health authorities are allowing numbers to be included, which should not, under any circumstance be in there. I’m puzzled why.
A person entering a hospital with a serious illness is also asked about Covid-19. As it’s a notifiable disease they report that in the event of the death despite the fact the person may or may not have died from the virus. They did die with it.
Similarly in the community, deaths are being recorded as, ‘from Covid-19’, or ‘Covid-19 related’ by GP’s if the deceased had shown any symptoms even though there is no evidence to suggest the death was caused by Covid-19.
Sweden has assessed that, and shows that deaths from, or with, are very different. The statistics may well reduce the ‘death figure’ by two thirds when correctly reported as from.
So remember the point on how to analyse data:
No bias, retain emotional intelligence, it is noise without true understanding of context. Test understanding with humility and you have the wisdom and emotional intelligence to see you through this.
Socially distance
But please. Stay out of the petri dish until it passes, otherwise we start again and again.
Social distance and we will be out of this sooner rather than later.
