Lockdown 2021: Day 8

by Pseud O'Nym

Nosferatu read my post of yesterday and suggested that the only person feeling any worse from my late night/early morning navel gazing was me and to this end, for today’s post, I’m going to deal with something altogether more cheery.

Deaths from COVID.

I’m not being flippant or deliberately provocative here. But logical reasoning, analytical deduction and comparative analysis, make any other interpretation of the data sheer nonsense, if not a deliberate falsehood. Yes, I think COVID is real, and a real threat to life, the two notions sit quite comfortably together in my head. Just because I think that the data has been misinterpreted, it doesn’t therefore follow that I think the whole COVID thing is a hoax.

But the incidence of deaths from COVID, relative to the amount of tests carried out and the subsequent number of positive test results from them, are good news. More than good actually, bloody fantastic!

As of Monday 11th of January, the last time any new data was uploaded onto https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details the amount of coronavirus tests carried out was just over 56,000,000. Of those, just under 3,200,000 were positive.

Or about 6%. But it gets even better. Or worse, depending on your point of view, but for now, I’m going to go with better.

Because of that 6%, guess how many die? Come on, were all adults here, no place for wishy-washy sentimentality here, how many? Just under 82,000. So if we take that 6% and turn it into 100%, that 82,00 becomes 2.6%.

So naturally enough, I then ask myself what’s the percentage of deaths relative to the total amount of tests carried out? And what does that give us?  Less than 0.25%  Yup, for a virus that has in little over a year managed to completely overturn everything we took for granted in our old lives and at the same time, cost the UK government nearly as much as the financial crisis of 2008, it hasn’t killed that many people, has it?

Actually, it may be less than that, less than 2.6% or 82,000 or 0.25% or whatever number we choose. Because that’s…..another post. Of course every death is a tragedy and one feels for the bereaved, but sympathy shouldn’t inhibit our ability to look at the data as just numbers.  Numbers don’t lie – unless that number is £350 million painted on the side of a coach – but emotions do, sentimentality does, Before I go, I’ll just leave you with what I consider to be one best movie endings ever.