Statistics

The (paraphrased) saying goes. "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. 

The bruhaha over the Lancet study sure proves that saying.  A bunch of eggheads arguing with each other over how to properly extrapolate numbers from data points. 

My guess is that not a single one of these statisticians, pro or con, have been over here on the ground.  And if they haven't been over here, it's unlikely they know anything about the level of confidence they should have in any of the numbers.

Be it 60,000 or 600,000 deaths, let's not forget that these are people, not numbers.  Lives, not statistics.  Families, not data points. 

Comments

[A.M.]

Yes Sir

total agreement and thank you for posting it Sir!

[DeeeWaaayyne]

Do you know anything about the how this research was conducted or have the goggles given you x-ray vision into the calculation of changes in the mortality rates?

[DeeeWaaayyne]

Oh, and those deaths are not lives or data points. They're simply commas, minor punctuation in the sentence of history.

Just ask Dear Leader of the Free World.

Several hundred thousand commas.