The Corona Virus Numbers

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

-Albert Einstein
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We will likely notice substantial fluctuations in the number of Corona Virus cases. We can blame the evil China empire or incompetent governments but the truth is as usual somewhere in the middle.

Beware of the 'Stat Man'

For any type of new infection or disease a standard test or method to identify who is infected has to be established. This is often challenging. In the case of the Covid-19 virus the Chinese began counting people only people with pneumonia. This neglected those who had mild symptoms but were also infected with the virus. Once they changed their standard test the numbers rapidly increased. Did the virus growth increase or were the methods to identify the virus improved and included more victims. This change in methodology gave the appearance the virus was spreading. In reality we were more accurately identifying victims.  We saw this in the early 2000 when health insurance companies and medical teams began increased testing and education of identifying diabetics. Suddenly the number of people with diabetes was doubling but in reality the number of diabetics were increasing at the same rate we were just more accurately identifying those with the disease. When looking at the raw data after a data collection standard or method had changed, one could incorrectly conclude the virus is spreading faster then originally indicated. 

Since the Corona virus is new the sample size is still small so any change in standards or data collection techniques will have a larger impact on the numbers. This should not negate the collection of data but one has to understand the potential inaccuracies within the data. 

Another concern that must be understood is the potential for deliberate manipulation of the data in order to sell or manipulate an audience. Business wants to sell more products and services and will use stats to their advantage. The media wants your attention and they want you coming back for more so they will use statistics to achieve their means. Politicians need to sell their usefulness and make their opposition look bad or wrong so they will use stats to their advantage. This leaves you. And you are stuck in the middle. You want to do what is right but you also must step back and research for yourself the data. Finding multiple sources when possible and using historical and proven events to create your conclusions instead of relying on business, media and politicians for their self gaining spins. 

When developing conclusions with statistics from raw data it is best to err on the side of caution  especially when those conclusions lead to an extreme.