How little we know

Another in my (endless) series about the coronavirus.

I still see articles and social media stories about ‘how bad the US is doing with Covid’, complete with graphs designed to set your hair on fire.

Game on! Here’s one such chart:

Big countries all, right? You probably already guessed what’s wrong with this one: it compares a country trying to (and mostly getting) good data–the US–with several similar countries where no one believes their data.

Let’s try that again with “good data” countries:

OMG! We are the worst. I call this stunt “fun with data.” Here’s another version, using data that is displayed on a logarithmic scale, adjusted for population size, comparing the US and EU and ignoring a small island nation no one visits (I’m looking at you, New Zealand. More people cross the US border in two days than visit the Kiwis in a year!):

What you are witnessing is data convergence, which is the phenomenon that occurs when a natural event plays out over time. In plain English, some (even very large) initial differences gradually disappear over time.

Heard of the unique experiment in Sweden over their policies? Here’s the latest data:

Wait, you’ll say, but don’t government policies matter? Yes, but mostly in degree and for a time. Note the similarity between the data tends for deaths in these disparate countries/Unions, despite very different policies/situations:

If you want to see something really interesting, look at the data for Japan. They have a large population and were a hub of international travel. They also were one of the first to confront the pandemic based on the cruise ship Diamond Princess which pulled into Yokohama harbor full of coronavirus.

The Japanese government had a big disadvantage: the world’s most elderly and therefore (according to the WHO and CDC) vulnerable population. They also had one huge advantage: a compliant population accustomed to wearing masks. They intensely studied the Diamond Princess affair and concluded airborne transmission was probable even if it was not the main source of spread. They further decided that the main variables in spread were close contact, closed spaces, and crowded places. They initiated an educational campaign called the Three C’s so everyone understood what the problem was, why it was important, and what they (the public) were supposed to do.

They never quarantined their entire society. They did not mandate mask wearing. They do not (still) do mass testing (less than 10% of the testing done in America). Theaters remain open but socially distant. The mass transit system runs full with open windows. Schools reopened in June with staggered schedules. Sports are played with spectators (no cheering, social distancing in the stands). There are no legal limits beyond the governmental and cultural exhortation to avoid the three C’s. How has that worked out?

Are their lessons universal? No. Are they applicable? Yes. When we blindly close schools, or restaurants, or churches without regard to activity or size, we are not following the data (ie., the science). Likewise, when we ignore social-distancing or mask wearing, we are ignoring obvious answers to the problem. Both are critical. The first because no society can long endure excessive quarantining, loss of income, or loss of human contact. People went out during the great plagues of Medieval Europe, for God’s sake! The second because these are small-but-helpful measures that buy time and mutually protect us, whether they are foolproof or not.

I’m not nearly as tired of the lockdown as I am of the politicized use of data and specious counter-arguments. Yes, you need to wear a mask and stand apart. No, it doesn’t solve everything; only a vaccine does, and yes, the vaccine is safe and effective and you need to take it. No, we could not save hundreds of thousands of people who were vulnerable due to obesity and illness and some genetic combination which Covid uniquely targeted: we could play for time, but given the vaccine took almost a year (under a miraculous scenario which we engineered), we were going to lose them. No, it it is not useful to compare a globally connected, large, heterodox nation like the United States to small islands or geographically-isolated, homogeneous countries. Do I have to explain why?

Here’s a way to reconsider the pandemic by comparing it to another natural phenomenon to put it into perspective: earthquakes. They happen. Actually, they happen almost everywhere. People die. Sometimes they happen somewhere regularly, and people become used to them, and their governments prepare for them. Sometimes the preparations are so good that most quakes don’t kill people or destroy things. But even then, sometimes major earthquakes still happen, things fall down, and people still die. Sometimes earthquakes don’t happen for a long time, then suddenly reappear, and they are catastrophic. Know when/where the largest earthquake was recorded in the continental United States (i.e., lower 48)? New Madrid, Missouri, in 1812. So large it moved the Mississippi river hundreds of meters. That one goes off again? Bad things will happen. Some will blame the government for not being prepared, and maybe more should be done. But really?

Every country has made serious mistakes facing this crisis. No medical entity or public health body has covered itself in glory. Some mistakes were worse than others (personally, not quickly quarantining eldercare facilities was among the worst, and it happened in such diverse places as Germany, Sweden, and New York State) and some were avoidable (the early US debate over wearing masks, for example). Some results were not reproducible: not every nation is a remote island, nor does everybody have Africa’s remarkably young demographics. I’m willing to bet the historical record of Covid-19 will not focus on the spread or mortality (neither of which were impressive by historical standards), nor on government actions (which were all over the place) but rather on the speed of the vaccine development, which broke all records while maintaining necessary safeguards. That was truly remarkable.

*As a footnote, if you EVER want to look at Covid data, you MUST go to the Financial Times website here, which allows you to do the kind of comparisons I made above. It is the best website and most tailor-able data display available.