It’s Not Common Sense

The news last night had a story comparing several countries to the US. The context was the Corona virus. The basic story was that ‘these’ countries handled the COVID-19 situation better than the US. The story had an animation of a graph showing ‘these’ countries totals(?) over time versus the US totals versus time. The US totals rose, plateaued and then showed a slight decline at the end. ‘These’ countries had totals that never really left the x-axis.

We were told that ‘these’ countries had strict lock downs, mask mandates and social distancing. The reporter even threw in the comment that their citizens didn’t protest any of these measures.

The message was clear. Strong government action worked and you shouldn’t debate it. It’s just common sense.

Only it isn’t common sense. I it were, you wouldn’t have to spend years and years of training to become an epidemiologist.

Let’s start with the graph. It wasn’t clear what was being graphed. I’m sure if I paused the news, there would be information about what data was graphed, the scale and the actual countries being compared. There would probably be a citation in small print telling me where the data came from. But in these days of sloppy thinking, that really doesn’t matter. It’s common sense. Their lines were near zero and the US line rose and rose. End of discussion.

Only it shouldn’t be. For example, if the lines represented absolute numbers of tested individuals, the graph would represent a good thing. Perhaps it was the number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19. Well it isn’t proper to compare the US to a country with a smaller population.

Then there were the countries that were used for the comparison. My recollections was that they included Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan. Again, there is a problem using these nations for comparison to the US. They are all island nations which means they have the advantage of isolation that the US doesn’t. Epidemiologists have methods for accounting for this and typically will separate these data sets from non-island nations.

Taiwan is also an interesting case to include because they had very good control of the spread as far back as Feb. 2020. But it was not widely reported. I suspect that is because they did not mandate masks (at least initially) and they have never had to lockdown businesses. What they did do is implement border control, limiting people coming in from foreign countries, mandating isolation for citizens returning from overseas. Otherwise, they left their citizens and businesses free to implement their own precautions. And given that freedom, they did.

Australia and New Zealand are in the Southern Hemisphere which further complicates a comparison with the US, a Northern Hemisphere country. Epidemiologists know understand that the flu season varies with season. So, the Southern Hemisphere experiences peak cases 6 months out of phase with the Northern Hemisphere. When comparing two different counties you have to account for that. Epidemiologists have also noticed that epidemics, in general, follow different patterns based on climate zones. Flu season cases have a different patterns in regions near the equator compared to regions further north.

It is morally safe to nod your head and agree with the news as they throw graphs and numbers in front of you. But it isn’t common sense. If you want to be rational, you must think for yourself and not just accept what ever is put in front of you.