Coronavirus: A Health Emergency Or Is There Another Agend

There is an aphorism attributed to the great American writer, Mark Twain. He is said to have made the claim: there are three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics. That has always proved to be useful guidelines, although it did not deter me from an early career as a university statistician.
 
 
Twain’s wisdom was recalled to mind when confronting what can only be described as blanket cover of a virus currently doing the rounds of the planet. Known generally as Covid-19 it has induced a reaction from nearly all western governments, with the possible exception of Sweden, that is to say the least extraordinary.
 
Part of the reaction has been to attribute to China the ignominy of being both the source of the virus, and of wilful attempts to mislead the world. Although the data at present, and that is a deliberate qualification, appears to suggest that the Covid-19 virus originated in China, that is a far from established scientific fact. The accusation that China is “responsible” tells one more about the ideological commitment of the speaker then it does about the antecedence of any given disease.
 
China was certainly the first to publicly acknowledge the existence of the disease which appeared in the city of Wuhan, the capital of a region of 40+ million people. To accuse China of being the “source” of the virus on that basis displays not only a profound ignorance of how viruses are spread. It also reflects the not so well-hidden biases and presumptions of the accuser.
 
The ill-will of the China accusers is further evidenced by the false accusations made against them by western commentators. It is an established fact that China advised the World Health Organisation as soon as it established that there was in fact a virus affecting its population. That realisation was quickly followed by draconian measures imposed by the Chinese government, drastically curtailing both in numbers and geography the extent of the virus’s contagion.
 
Is the virus spread rapidly to other countries around the world, so too did the level of hysteria and the imposition of draconian measures. It is a fundamental principle governing the actions of governments that measures taken which inhibit the freedom and safety of the citizen must be commensurate with the risk. It is extremely doubtful that such a claim could be made in Australia.
 
To examine that question a little more closely one has to look at the statistics, or perhaps more accurately, reverting to Twain’s aphorism, the misuse of the statistics.
Before governments pronounce on the risk of a given phenomenon, certain basic data have to be established. The first question, rather obviously, is how many people have the virus? The answer is that we do not know. The reasons we do not know the answers are multiple. Let us do a simple exercise.
 
The Australian population is, in round figures, 25 million. There are therefore 25 million people at risk of catching the disease. How many actually do is therefore a figure between one and 25 million.
 
 
Of that 25 million, some have already caught the disease, suffered only mild symptoms that they probably attributed to the common cold, and recovered without medical intervention. We do not know, and the overwhelming likelihood is we will never know, how many people fall into that category.
 
The second statistic is those that catch the virus to a degree that it is recognisable and seek some form of medical intervention. Again, we have a totally unknown figure because there are no reliable statistics about the number of people in this category. Speculation, a common technique of the mainstream media, is less than helpful.
 
The first statistic that begins to have some utility is the number of people who actually require medical intervention. Even here, the data are not as reliable as the mainstream media would suggest. The media have tended to focus on those who have died, and indeed, insofar as there is any degree of thinking behind the media hysteria about the spread of this virus it is firmly linked to the admittedly dramatic consequence of dying.
 
Even here however, the data are less than clear. The overwhelming majority of the still very small numbers of people who have actually died in Australia have two overwhelming conditions in common. The first is that they are overwhelmingly older people, that is, more than 70 years of age and a large portion of them are over 80 years of age. Given that life expectancy at birth for that generation was significantly less, and even by contemporary standards they are aged, their death is hardly a shock or surprise.
 
This factor is compounded by the other outstanding characteristic of the deceased, and that is that they had an average of three pre-existing serious medical conditions.  Without detailed autopsy analysis it is impossible to attribute their death to any specific cause from those multiple conditions.  That data are not available and until it is the dramatic media coverage of the deaths is simply unwarranted.
 
If we look at the number of deaths that have been attributed to the virus, as unreliable and overstated as that is likely to be, we see that the numbers are actually very small.  As at 2 April 2020 the number of deaths attributed to the coronavirus stood at 23 out of a total of 5106 cases of persons to whom a diagnosis has established that they actually had coronavirus.
 
Twenty-three deaths are less than 1 per million of the population.  The total number of people diagnosed as having the disease equates to 0.02 percent of the population. By way of comparison the total number of deaths in Australia in 2017 (the last year available) were 160,909.
 
Let us assume that the number of deaths attributed to coronavirus continues at the same rate for the rest of the year. That will create a total number of deaths of just on 90 persons or 0.05 percent of total deaths likely this year.
 
Which brings me to the $64,000 question. Is the shutting down of social activities, a massive increase in unemployment and a devastating disruption to every fabric of everyday life warranted in the light of the actual figures?  
 
In my view, most assuredly not. Which raises the obvious question: what is the government’s real agenda in this huge assault on the lives of everyday citizens? 
有一句格言被认为是伟大的美国作家马克·吐温的名言。据说他已经声明:有三种谎言。谎言，该死的谎言和统计数据。这一直被证明是有用的指导方针，尽管它并没有阻止我作为一名大学统计学家的早期职业生涯。
当面对一种只能被描述为对目前正在地球上传播的病毒的全面覆盖时，人们会想起吐温的智慧。它通常被称为Covid-19，已经引起了几乎所有西方政府的注意，可能除了瑞典，其他而言都是不寻常。
部分反应是将中国既作为病毒的来源又故意误导世界的耻辱归咎于中国。尽管目前的数据(这是一个经过深思熟虑的界定)似乎表明Covid-19病毒起源于中国，但这远非既定的科学事实。指责中国是需要“负责任”的，这更多地表明了说话者的意识形态承诺，而不是任何特定疾病的先兆。
 毫无疑问，中国是第一个公开承认这种疾病存在的国家，这种疾病出现在拥有4000多万人口的武汉市。在此基础上指责中国是病毒的“源头”，不仅显示了对病毒传播方式的极度无知。它也反映了对原告显而易见的偏见和假设。
西方评论家对中国的不实指控进一步证明了对原告中国的恶意。一个确定的事实是，中国在世界卫生组织确定事实上有一种病毒影响到它的人口时就通知了该组织。意识到这一点后，中国政府很快采取了严格措施，从数量和地域上大幅削减了病毒的传播范围。
病毒是否迅速传播到世界其他国家，严重的程度和严厉措施的实施也是如此。制约政府行动的一项基本原则是，抑制公民自由和安全的措施必须与风险相称。在澳大利亚提出这样的要求是非常令人怀疑的。
为了更仔细地研究这个问题，我们必须看看统计数据，或者更准确地说，回到吐温的格言，统计数据的误用。在政府宣布某一特定现象的风险之前，必须确定某些基本数据。很明显，第一个问题是有多少人感染了病毒？答案是我们不知道。我们不知道答案的原因是多方面的。让我们做一个简单的实验。
澳大利亚的总人口是2500万。因此，有2500万人有感染这种疾病的风险。因此，有多少人真正做到了这一点，将这个数字控制在1百万到2千5百万之间。
在这2500万人中，有些人已经感染了这种病毒，只是出现了轻微的症状，可能是普通感冒引起的，并且在没有医疗干预的情况下康复了。我们不知道，我们永远不会知道这种难以接受的可能性，有多少人属于这一类情况。
第二个统计数据是那些在某种程度上可以检测出并寻求某种形式的医疗干预的病毒感染者。同样的，我们对这个数据是完全未知的，因为关于这类人的数据没有可靠的统计。推测是主流媒体的一种常见手法，但它的作用不大。
第一个开始有用的统计数字是实际需要医疗干预的人数。即使在这里，数据也不像主流媒体所说的那么可靠。媒体往往把焦点放在那些已经死亡的人身上，事实上，只要媒体对这种病毒传播的夸张鼓吹背后有任何程度的思考，它就与公认的死亡的戏剧性后果紧密相连。
然而，即使在这里，数据也不太清楚。在澳大利亚实际死亡的人数仍然非常少，其中绝大多数人有两个决定性的共同条件。首先，他们绝大多数是老年人，即70岁以上，其中很大一部分是80岁以上。考虑到这一代人出生时的预期寿命明显较短，即使按当代标准衡量，他们也已步入老年，因此他们的死亡并不令人震惊或惊讶。
这一因素加上死者的另一个突出特点，即他们平均有三种先前存在的严重疾病。如果没有详细的尸检分析，就不可能把他们的死亡归因于这些多重情况下的任何具体原因。这些数据是不可获得的，直到媒体戏剧性的报道死亡时，也是完全没有根据的。
如果我们看看由该病毒引起的死亡人数，尽管这很可能是不可靠的和被夸大的，我们就会发现这个数字实际上是非常小的。截至2020年4月2日，在5106例确诊患有冠状病毒的患者中，死于冠状病毒的人数为23例。
23人的死亡人数不到百万分之一。被诊断患有此病的总人数相当于总人口的0.02%。通过比较，2017年（可获得的最后一年）澳大利亚的死亡总数为160909人。
让我们假设，在今年余下的时间里，冠状病毒造成的死亡人数继续以同样的速度增长。这将导致90人死亡，占今年死亡人数的0.05%。
这就引出了64000美元的问题。从实际数字来看，社会活动的停止、失业率的大幅上升以及对日常生活的每一个结构的毁灭性破坏是否值得？
在我看来，肯定不是。这就提出了一个显而易见的问题：在这场对普通民众生活造成的大规模损失中，政府的真正措施是什么？（作者是James O’Neill 律师）
(责任编辑：James O’Neill)