Newsy Numbers

EriDay writes "The Wall Street Journal has a new feature called The Numbers Guy about "the way numbers and statistics are used - and abused - in the news, business and politics". The first installment lets us know that somewhere between 0 and 1 Billion (or more) people will be killed by Asian bird flu."

Comments

Statistical Lies...

[Allen Zadr]

First published in 1954: How to Lie With Statistics

Good book, recommended reading, if you like the above article.

Re:Statistical Lies...

[tgrigsby]

Or if you want the Reader's Digest version, there's a quick and easy explanation of how to use critical thinking when you hear statistics here: http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~taflinge/evistats.html

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

[markh1967]

The article reminded me of 'A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper' by John Allen Paulos. A great read for those interested in the mangling of science and numeracy by the media and politicians.

A BBC Radio series worth listening to..

[Angostura]

The BBC has an excellent radio series called More Or Less" that unpicks the numbers and statistics that are bandied about in the news. It is authoritative, interesting and a remarkably good listen (available on demand using Real Audio)

Re:Funny Statistic

[The Spoonman]

I do hope that less than 1/3 of the population uses marijuana, as it's illegal.

Yes, because everyone who has half a brain and can think critically knows how dangerous marijuana can be, and that the government would never make illegal something that wasn't dangerous. They're fully acquainted with what should be illegal and what shouldn't.

Is it me, or is HTML like the PERFECT language of sarcasm?? :)

But a billion COULD die ...

[Anonymous Coward]

First rule of government: inconclusive data means no action.

The article is about H5N1, better known as "bird flu." Some important things to know about avian influenza: in the small number of cases we've seen of it, it has a 75% or higher mortality rate (as opposed to 2.5% for the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918); it is remarkably difficult to create vaccines for it, because it kills the eggs used to create traditional influenza vaccines; the variants we see are amantadine/rimantadine resistant, limiting antiviral treatment options and suggesting significant exchange of genetic material with human influenza viruses; it is pantropic (capable of infecting tissue across the body) in some animals, and both pneumotropic (as all influenza are) and neurotropic in others; and H5N1 is epidemic in Asia amongst many different waterfowl.

So, what we know is that if an H5N1 variant emerges that is human-infectuous and easily transmissible, the chances are very, very high that the resultant pandemic would burn through populations like a wildfire. Furthermore, the chances of this happening are greater than either the appearance of or the damages from various high-profile, high-budget "homeland security" scenarios, such as smallpox (unlikely to occur) or a dirty bomb (more panic than damage).

So, what are the right risk factors? That's hard to say, since it depends on the right mutations being hit. But what we do know is that H5N1 represents at least as dangerous a threat as al-Qaeda.

SARS

[KMSelf]

Why was SARS so significant?

• Novel disease with (initially) unknown etiology.
• Novel disease agent (SARS virus) of unknown origin.
• Extremely high mortality rate (as noted by other responses). The ultimate mortality rate appears to be around 9%, though localized rates in excess of 20% exist, possibly due to variance in the infectious agent (more below). Moreover, as I was following stats at the time, the mortality rate was grossly underreported for several weeks as the epidemic unfolded. I wrote several nastygrams myself to The Economist which was quoting a much lower (3-8% IIRC) mortality. Mortality varied greatly with age, from Wikepedia: "below 1% for people aged 24 or younger, 6% for those 25 to 44, 15% in those 45 to 64 and more than 50% for those over 65." The article has a wealth of information.
• Extremely high transmission rate. SARS was passed between victims based on very casual contact, including apparently nothing more than sharing a confined room for a brief period of time.
• Poor response to therapy. Once ill, a victim's prognosis was largely independent of treatment. Viruses are difficult to treat in any event, and the few nominally useful antiviral treatments which do exist were largely ineffectual.
• Rapid mutation and/or wide variance among viral strains. Based on my after-the-fact recollection of SARS mortality rates. China had among the highest mortality, rates were far lower elsewhere. This may have been due to differences in treatment or more strains of the virus present in China (where SARS originated) than elsewhere.
• Suppression of initial information. China's government and health authorities initially responded to the SARS outbreak by supressing information. This confounded responses be making unavailable useful information and generating rumors and speculation.
• High morbidity and mortality among healthcare workers. Among the hardest hit communities were the doctors, nurses, and researchers initially responding to SARS. Among the victims were several of those who first identified, treated, and isolated the disease. In a broader outbreak, healthcare workers would likely have suffered significantly. A friend's wife, staff at one of the few US hospitals to encounter SARS (Belvue, NYC) was very concerned.

So you've got a new, disease with unknown agent, few treatments, high mortality, and a large impact on healthcare infrastructure. Not a good sign.

The extent to which cases and deaths due to SARS were minimized is not an indication that the disease was overblown, but that the response to it was highly effective. Remember that there was a massive quarantine effort made. Again from Wikipedia:

Attempts were made to control further SARS infection through the use of quarantine. Over 1200 were under quarantine in Hong Kong, while in Singapore and Taiwan, 977 and 1147 were quarantined respectively. Canada also put thousands of people under quarantine. [ 12] In Singapore, schools were closed for 10 days and in Hong Kong they are closed until April 21 to contain the spread of SARS.

SARS was a very close call, and a big wakeup alert.