How to create ‘impressive’ statistics

 

The hot days just past must have had some softening effect on the brains of writers and editors in‘Our MSM’. I confess to a slight indication of me cracking up as well. Last night I dreamt I was handed a mask as I was entering some sort of premises. The mask felt like several layers of surgical gauze – and I actually held it in front of my face … fine sort of muzzle-rebel, am I not!

So as I wended my way through today’s online papers I noted that some were upset that people – ‘council workers’ – are apparently going to knock on our doors when being traced for CV-19. The ‘tracers’ employed by the government have been sitting on their hands. It’ll all ‘go local’, but we’ll still be paying for at least a third of those tracers, just in case there’s a flu (e.g. link, paywalled).

Then there’s the ongoing row about kids going back to school. It looks to me as if ‘Our MSM’ would rather derail Johnson’s plans to have all schools open while moaning at the same time about ‘a lost generation’. Thus we read today that, omigawd, ‘older pupils’ can spread the virus as much as adults! This is not based on proper medical evidence, this outcry comes from ‘sources’ who are involved in a PHE study which isn’t even analysed yet:

“The Times understands that researchers working on the study are unhappy with the way ministers have used the findings, which have not been fully analysed. The preliminary results do suggest that primary schools pose little danger, with only six positive tests out of 9,000 tested so far. […] It is thought that the study, which divided children into under-tens and over-tens, discovered a difference in the older group, which researchers now want to investigate when secondary schools reopen fully. A source close to the study said it suggested that as children aged “their bodies start to act like small adults” in passing on the virus more effectively, something also seen in other studies.” (link, paywalled)

I’m somewhat puzzled as to how these investigators would be able to investigate if older pupils are told to stay at home because: “The Risk!”. It’s however obvious why they and the Times reporter have come out with this amazing ‘analysis’ which doesn’t even exist yet:

“Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said yesterday that a study being conducted by PHE of thousands of pupils who returned to schools in June showed that there was little risk in government plans for all children to be back in the classroom for the new academic year next month.” (link, paywalled)

How dare a mere education secretary disregard “The Risk!”! We know one thing: parents cannot go to work if their kids have to stay at home. Forget the economy, everybody surely can ‘WFH’, the new label: Work From Home. We know which ‘workers’ prefer to keep staying at home, on full pay and perks, so they don’t care if schools are kept closed. The intrepid reporters in ‘Our MSM’ are apparently oblivious to the fate of those who need to go back to work because their job may well be lost and their government support money is running out and whose kids must be able to go to school.

Then there’s the ongoing saga of the illegal immigrants. Our broadsheet editors are apparently incapable of or don’t dare having a principled opinion on those illegal rubber dinghy travellers. We still don’t know if and what Macron will come up with. Will our ‘Border Farce’ be allowed to turn those illegals back? It’s something our government is ‘considering’ – not actually doing, as would be the right of any government:

“Ministers are considering using 42m-long Border Force cutters to stop boats from reaching Britain’s territorial waters. The French authorities would then be contacted to intercept them, with a focus on intelligence sharing. The government has moved away from a more aggressive Australian-style “push-back” approach, which would have involved Royal Navy and Border Force vessels intercepting boats as they left French waters.” (link, paywalled)

That would make the French ‘very unhappy’ according to the French representative for Calais who said that this is dangerous because the Royal Navy with their big boats would push a ‘very small boat’ with poor migrants back into French waters – they might drown! –  and the French wouldn’t like seeing the Royal Navy close to French waters (link, paywalled)

Meanwhile, ‘tough’ Ms Patel visited Dover yesterday, making another of her ‘tough’ statements: “I am committed to making this incredibly dangerous route unviable.” (link, paywalled). Yes, love – that’ll work, especially  when you’re surrounded by civil serpents who tell you that ‘it can’t be done’ because ‘Macron won’t like it’.

Talking of civil serpents – here’s another nice thing they’re concocting for the winter. That’s ‘flu season,’ you recall. So they’re now proposing to set up ‘drive-through’ vaccination centres for flu jabs “in an attempt to stop a combined wave of winter bugs and coronavirus crippling the NHS.” (link, paywalled). GP surgery car parks might also be used. It’s the ‘new normal’ way of ‘protecting Our Sacred Cow’ which must be protected at all costs!

It’s beyond belief that the reporters aren’t even aware of the utter idiocy of writing about ‘Our NHs’ being overwhelmed in overcrowded hospitals’ when they must know that wards are standing empty, that two thirds of private hospitals are still being retained! Don’t they check their own archives?

On top of that we’re informed that, in the wake of that ‘investigation’ into how PHE has calculated and inflated death numbers, ministers have reached ‘a compromise’:

“Three different daily Covid-19 death tolls are to be published after a compromise between ministers and scientists. The one favoured by ministers is likely to show a big reduction in daily deaths, bringing it close to single figures rather than the dozens usually reported on weekdays.” (link, paywalled)

Ministers want to count every death up to 28 days after a positive CV-19 test. The other method, favoured by statisticians, is counting every death up to 60 days after such test. For the time being the old muddled reporting is also retained. These numbers, as we know full well by now, are still not based on proper clinical data.

Will cancer deaths still figure as ‘death by CV-19’? That would at least reduce our dismal cancer death statistics! Professor Carl Henegan of the Oxford-based centre for evidence-based medicine makes the point, yet again:

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “The public are so confused by this and all they will see is the highest number and that up to 100 people a day are still dying. That’s unhelpful and inaccurate. What they should do, if they accept they don’t know how to make sense of this, is to publish the raw data and so people like us can analyse it.” (link, paywalled)

Indeed so – but then ‘Our NHS’ and indeed government would need to reinstate the order that a death certificate be signed by two doctors, one of whom must have actually seen the patient. After all, with wards empty and ‘Our NHS’ actually underwhelmed, that could be done, no?

To further confuse the issue, there will still be the data compiled by the ONS which includes all deaths, regardless, as long as CV-19 is mentioned on the death certificate, and there’s Mr Chris Whitty who thinks the ‘gold standard’ is measuring ‘excess deaths’. Well – yes, let’s do that, and ask why we need Lockdown when that measure shows that excessive deaths have now been negative for weeks. But that would leave ‘Our MSM’ without material to keep their fear and hysteria campaign going, and we can’t have that! 

Having mentioned the flu, I leave you with a rather interesting little note in the British Medical Journal which I dug up, being a puzzled and nosey old cow. After all, there are the yearly wails about ‘Our NHS’ being overwhelmed by seasonal flu patients, so I wondered if government in the form of PHE had any numbers on that. This note is from 2018, and the writer blames the ONS for ‘inflated statistics’, quoting PHE numbers

“So the government are now apparent not only blaming fluctuations in winter mortality on flu but all excess winter mortality on flu, to the tune of more than 50,000 deaths. […] On this [PHE] basis, the number of deaths in England and Wales in an admittedly exceptionally bad year would have been only in the region of 335-340 deaths, and the ONS seem to have exaggerated the risk to the public by in the region of 150 times.” (link)

It is odd, isn’t it, how we survived all that without Lockdown! Doesn’t it look as if our civil serpents just dusted down these ancient procedures, changing only the label from ‘flu’ to ‘CV-19’? And isn’t it odd that the same statistical ‘mistakes’ are being made, this time with truly dire results for our lockdowned Nation?

I can only conclude by observing, with the French, that ‘plus ça change plus c’est la même chose’, or, if you’re biblically inclined, with Ecclesiastes who said thousands of years ago that there’s nothing new under the sun. Don’t ask why ‘Our MSM’ couldn’t find this out – they’re only  focussing on ‘news and politics by twitter’.

 

KBO!

 

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