{"id":79476,"date":"2021-09-14T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=79476"},"modified":"2021-09-14T06:27:13","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T11:27:13","slug":"statistical-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=79476","title":{"rendered":"Statistical Rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Article on vaccine hesitancy uses risk graph that shows <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/public-health\/report\/statistical-analysis-covid-19-breakthrough-infections-and-deaths?utm_source=twitter&#038;utm_medium=social&#038;utm_campaign=thf-tw\">what they want it to show <\/a>to support their argument, not what it ought to show for me to make up my own mind.  Odds of dying fully vaccinated are 1 in 137,000.  Yeah, versus the odds of dying from what?  Car accident?  Hot air balloon crash?  Carnival knife thrower?  Who cares?  In an article about vaccine hesitancy, the correct comparison is odds of dying while fully vaccinated versus odds of dying while not vaccinated.  If you&#8217;re trying to convince me to get vaccinated, then show me the vast improvement in the odds resulting from the vaccine.  Instead, the next graph shows just the opposite.  Odds of NOT dying from Covid are the same as the ordinary flu, except for the elderly infirm.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I lack the math skills to convert the second chart into the first chart but I&#8217;m guessing that in a nation of 350 million people with only 650,000 deaths (and those are deaths counted using the phony numbers), my odds of dying from Covid while not vaccinated are only 1 in 538.  Given most of the deaths are elderly infirm, my odds are actually better, maybe 1 in 1,000 about the same as drowning or a motorcycle accident, risks that I consider slight enough to ignore.  And since I work mostly from home and rarely travel, my odds of meeting an Covid-infected person to catch the bug and die from it are even lower, just as my odds of dying from snake bite are much lower than the national average, which is lower than the global average. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I hate articles that use misleading graphs like that. They actually heighten my vaccine hesitancy.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>My favorite example from the last week; the star Tribune breathlessly pointing out that 69 people had gotten infected with Covid at the Minnesota State fair.<\/p><p><\/p><p>Which turns out to be an infection rate per million roughly 1\/4 that of the general population.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Article on vaccine hesitancy uses risk graph that shows what they want it to show to support their argument, not what it ought to show for me to make up my own mind. Odds of dying fully vaccinated are 1 in 137,000. Yeah, versus the odds of dying from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[416],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79477,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79476\/revisions\/79477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}