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Final Report

This is not the end of the Covid Crisis – too many politicians survived for that to happen – but it is the last of my sporadic bulletins emailed to folks kind enough to have asked how old Chris is getting by on the tip of the Bonavista Peninsula. Still “Quite Well, thank you”.

I went back and re-read “My Prediction” and to wrap up I present my comments on the corruption in the press and in people’s minds. These corruptions do so much to bend people towards the government’s will; fear-based decisions are usually bad decisions.

My Prediction

I wrote “Like all viruses this one will die down once it has run its course.” And this is happening now. You just have to look at one of the millions of data tables published daily to see a trend.

I wrote “the pollies who will bray that “Thanks to our herculean efforts and/or Draconian measures, our special laws shutting down businesses and prohibiting assemblies of more than [insert your number here] people, we have beaten this deadly virus!”.” These quotes are visible, although in the time-honored tradition of flogging a dead horse politicians will add a vague comment about “the second wave”, and it is usually “the second wave” rather than “a second wave”, to give the impression that that second wave has been positively identified.

I wrote “These statements will be issued somewhere between one and three months from now. That is, on or after Sunday, May 03, 2020 and on or before Monday, August 03, 2020. I lean towards May rather than August.” And indeed the month of May brought us the re-opening of schools, small businesses, the cute “bubble” concept, unenforceable in the Western World but a meaningless feel-good offering to the huddled masses.

I wrote “That is, once the pollies have made their point with their ill-thought out schemes, it will be time to get back to work.” And most of the items I can steel myself to read point out that deaths or no deaths, It Is Time For Us To Get Back To Work. It was the politicians at all levels, remember, who kept us away from our daily grind.

I did NOT think far enough ahead to predict that psychiatrists would weight in with a counter-measure of the psychological damage caused by isolation, nor the economists point that we are in danger of raising a generation that relies on welfare. Can’t happen in Newfoundland because welfare has been a way of life (literally) here since 1992.

Corrupted Minds

Your mind has been corrupted if you lay any credence to the figures quoted for Cases of the Covid virus. Here’s why:-

(1) Every nation has a different definition of a Case (or a Death or a Tested Positive, or any of the terms used in statistics)

(2) Every state or province within nation has a different definition of a Case (or a Death or a Tested Positive, or any of the terms used in statistics)

(3) Every municipality or city within a state or province has a different definition of a Case (or a Death or a Tested Positive, or any of the terms used in statistics)

(4) Every person I have chatted with has a different idea of what a Case is.

(5) Every person I have chatted with believes that the number of Cases is a data item of some use

(6) When I ask people “What is a case, exactly”, the most common response is a blank stare that lasts two seconds and then “I don’t really know”. That no-one responds with the traditional “I have no idea” disturbs me.

As far as I can make out, a “case” of Covid is one or more instances of a human having been found with some trace of the present or past hosting of the Covid Virus.

“one or more” because I have not heard of any control over the number of times you can get tested, and how the testing agencies control this. No-one (to date) is tattooed on their forehead with “tested 2020/03/29” or similar. You have a sniffle, go to your pharmacist who gives you a quick test, reports you as a case, and urges you to go see your doctor. You go to your doctor who gives you a deeper test, reports you as a case, and sends you off to a blood test at the local clinic where they take a blood sample and the next day report you as a case and direct you to go to the regional hospital where … they report you as a case and tell you to go home and stay at home.

Snap Quiz: How many cases of Covid virus have been reported.

If you wanted to fan flames of fear, how many cases would you report?

Could you sell more prime-time news that way?

Could you lock people into installing real-time tracking aps that way?

“instances” because I suspect that each test along the way has a different degree or level of quality. The first level is of course personal experience: I have a sniffle and a mild headache; (panic!) maybe I have this Covid thingy. Me? I’d probably wait until my vision became blurry and I could no longer read a book.

“Human” because the news and podcasts focus on a self-centred species (that until a few hundred years ago believed that it was dead-centre of the universe and until 101 years ago thought was a single galaxy …) and the most important thing for Planet Earth is that humans maintain the upper-hand. Even Guardian Science has podcasts asking whether Covid can “be transmitted between humans and animals”, narcissistically(?) ignoring the fact that humans are animals, no more, no less.

“some trace” because:-

(1) Viruses are typically much smaller than one micron (http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-are-viruses/) and (https://www.britannica.com/science/virus/Size-and-shape)

(2) Imagine that just one virus, one unit, has entered your bloodstream and is currently being pumped along your left arm while the technician draws a sample of blood from your right arm. The test will determine that you show no evidence of the virus, but the virus is there, and can reproduce. I cannot quickly find a period for the reproduction, strangely most web articles use generic adverbs “rapidly”, “frequently”, and “by the millions”. For the purposes of this paper I shall assume that the virus replicates by making 20 copies of itself every hour. After 24 hours there will be about 1.5 times ten raised to the power 32 copies. Of course that can’t happen, but you will be fully infected.

Snap Quiz: According to the technician’s report, Are you a Case?

(3) You have no sniffles, no headache, and no sore throat. Your body, like mine, has successfully recognized the brass buttons, peaked cap, and shell casings and obliterated (not decimated) the virus. Millions of brass buttons are strewn about fragments of rotting clothing.

Are you a Case?

(4) You were unaware of sniffles and headaches, but have not been tested.

Are you a Case?

(5) Tragically, you died in a collision on your way back from St John’s, after a 3½ hour early morning drive, a day spent sniffling, coughing, and getting aggravated at store clerks, surely the reason for your headache while visiting appliance stores and five minutes struggling to load a washing machine into your pickup truck. Balancing a donut and a cup of coffee you set off in the darkness for the 3½ drive home and hit a moose.

Were you a Case?

(6) An autopsy was performed and the Covid virus was detected.

Were you a Case?

(7) You are now immune to the virus but have had no reason or inclination to be tested. Because you are immune you can no longer be a carrier of the virus.

Are you a Case?

So much for Cases. And remember each nation/state/municipality will have different standards. I suspect that The Central Texas Veterans Health Care System in Temple (Texas) has higher standards than the cottage hospital in Bonavista.

“Deaths” suffers the same analysis. Do we include the death by suicide of the grandmother (near Bonavista) who took her life because she thought her daughter didn’t want her to see her granddaughter? Death by collision while you were groping for a handkerchief to cope with the oncoming sneeze? And so on.

Likewise “Tested Positive” with its associated “false positives” and “false negatives”

	Cases	Recovered	Deaths
Australia	7,227	6,640	102
Canada	93,085	51,048	7,498
UK	280,000		39,728
USA	1,890,000	432,000	109,000

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=covid+deaths+usa

Given that “cases”, “recovered” and “deaths” by nation are composed from figures accumulated from states and municipalities, how trustworthy are tables of data that show national figures?

And how is it that the United Kingdom appears to have NO recovered cases of Covid?

Here we wander into that well-travelled land of “Lies, Damned lies, and Statistics”

The USA shows the greatest number of cases (greater population, higher-quality testing facilities, fear-based population that rushes to be tested – so more tests per capita). But Canada and Australia are by most measures the two most congruent nations in the world, so how do they differ so widely in their figures? Canada’s proximity to the USA and Australia’s island isolation? I don’t think so. These viruses have spreading skills honed over three billion years.

	Cases	Recovered	Deaths	Population	Cases/	Recovered/	Deaths/
Australia	7,227	6,640	102	25,000,000
Canada	93,085	51,048	7,498	36,000,000	0.3%	0.1%
UK	280,000		39,728	67,000,000	0.4%		0.1%
USA	1,890,000	432,000	109,000	328,000,000	0.6%	0.1%

When we look at the data expressed as a percentage of population and show only data that are significant to three decimal places, we see that Australia isn’t a contender. Lucky Australians! The USA is the elephant at 0.6%.

Perhaps population density has something to do with it.

	Area	Density	Population per SqKm
Australia	7,692,000	3
Canada	9,985,000	4
UK	242,495	276
USA	9,834,000	33

Right. The UK is densely populated compared to the three larger countries.

	Cases	Recovered	Deaths	Normalized by density
Australia
Canada	23.0%	7.7%
UK	0.4%		0.1%
USA	5.0%	0.8%

I am getting out of my depth now, but if I have done the Excel formulas correctly, when we compare cases, recovered and deaths adjusted for density of population (as in “In the UK people live closer together than in the other three countries”) Canada is the elephant and the USA looks pretty good.

What’s my point?

That if you take figures from the media without scrutinizing them, you will be led down the garden path. And the media love to say things like “deaths adjusted for density of population” to capitalize on the “stay at home/self-isolation” scare and so make it look so expert!

So across Newfoundland people are patting themselves on the back glowing in the knowledge that “we have had no new cases for fourteen days” as if each Newfoundlander, including me, should get a medal, but no one has any idea what a “case” in Newfoundland is compared to a case in Toronto, or in Ontario, or in Canada, let alone in Malawi.

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