I find that I have become obsessed with data. Pandemic data to be precise. It comes in a wide variety of shapes and sizes… new cases; hospitalizations; ICU occupancy; ventilator use; deaths; financial support; vaccine production, shipment, utilization rates; unemployment rates; business closures; government deficits. But the problem is that trying to make sense of all this data can cause worry and stress.
I wake up in the morning and check the Financial Times website for the daily overview of the havoc being reeked on the world by COVID-19 19. Is US still a runaway dumpster fire of spread? Which countries in Europe are doing better than others? Where does Canada stand? Why the heck is India seemingly doing better than expected? How are the islands of the Caribbean doing?
The newspapers I subscribe to provide a bit of analysis around the latest numbers.
A bit more awake (and with some coffee) it is time to check the numbers closer to home. What is the Ontario Government reporting? Then the CBC local news feed to see how they have parsed out the Ottawa numbers.
Then a look at “How’s my Flattening” to see what the R numbers are for the province and the various individual health units where I have friends and family.
After lunch, Ottawa Public Health releases their local data. How full are local hospitals? How many outbreaks are there in Retirement Homes and how many are sick in the one my mother lives in? Much of this data never seems to jive with the Ontario numbers (they count on different timeframes) which leads to all kinds of confusion in my head.
Moving into the afternoon and then progressively deeper dives by following practitioners like @DFisman and @jkwan_md for their detailed analysis. Lots of time series and graphics that try to make sense of the numbers. I am not an epidemiologist and while the numbers are interesting, it is a bit risky for me to draw too many of my own conclusions. So, I take what I can from these sources and hope they are reliable.
Lately, many of these various sources have started to add vaccination numbers. It is great that we are finally getting to this stage of the pandemic process. The problem is that, as with the other data, at times the bloody numbers don’t seem to add up and even if they do, we often seem to be comparing the wrong ones. Todays example of this is just plain baffling… On Jan. 28, Ontario issued a significant correction to its vaccination data. According to officials, the number of completed vaccinations was inadvertently doubled. Officials said “the number of doses administered to achieve full vaccination” was counted rather than the number of people vaccinated.
But it is not just that I am pre-occupied with all this data. I am also becoming more and more confused by it and increasingly frustrated with the debates around it.
Epidemiologists, who have been trying to explain the virus and its potential for harm since the beginning, are turning on governments for “ignoring the science” and not being steadfast enough in their lockdowns. Businesspeople point to their own numbers…numbers of local businesses closing, and the lives and livelihoods forever changed by bankruptcy and demand lockdowns end. Educators worry about the long-term impacts on the large number of students who cannot attend school. Parents worry about the health risk of sending their kids back to school. Workers point to the lack of sick leave and “pandemic pay” for vulnerable front-line staff. Governments claim to be striking a delicate balance between the various competing interests at play and promote the multitude of financial support they have provided to individuals and business. Armchair observers on all sides second guess the actions of others. And even in the middle of the pandemic, some political leaders have called, or appear poised to call, elections while Opposition politicians rage that government priorities are wrong, of course using data to support their case.
Twitter and other social media platforms are magnifying these issues and the spawning all kinds of debates, which also leads to confusion. And the debates about the numbers is becoming increasingly adversarial, angry, and partisan. This is a concern to me because I am pretty sure that everyone involved in fighting this pandemic is doing so with good intentions and to the best of their ability.
My problem is that I tend to get angry at “Partisan COVID-19 Twitter” and those who engage in it. Biting my tongue on social media is getting harder to do.
Faced with all of this, by the end of the day, the only numbers I care about are how many new shows might be on Netflix and how many glasses of wine will it take to settle down and fall asleep …until the next day’s numbers start coming out…
Leave a Reply