For me, one of the most frustrating aspects of aggregating media coverage of the pandemic has long been the poor understanding and interpreting of statistical data by journalists, politicians and certain policy makers.
Over and over, stories appear in major media outlets based on incomplete data or misinterpretations of what is actually happening with Covid-19.
This in itself would be bad enough, but unwise public health policies are resulting in some areas, especially with regard to children and schools.
A prime example is the absolutely terrible idea of mandating vaccines for school-aged children -- a concept gaining ground in some areas but utterly unsupported by a rigorous analysis of the available data.
Fortunately, three mathematically-literate writers -- Leslie Bienen, Eric Happel, and Tracy Beth HΓΈeg -- have just published an excellent article called "How to Fix Our Broken Relationship With COVID Math" in the journal Persuasion.com.
Here are a few of their observations:
* (Q)uarantine policies have removed thousands of “exposed” children and staff from school, even though very few—63 out of 30,000 quarantined, in recent data from Los Angeles United School District—subsequently tested positive. This is not a good way to balance harms and benefits.
* Specific demographic factors such as race and ethnicity, obesity, diabetes, and other co-morbidities make an enormous difference in determining risk of a bad COVID-19 outcome. But the single most important risk factor, age, is often relegated to a few short lines in too much news coverage. Downplaying the huge decreased risk of mortality in children compared with mortality risk in the elderly is simply not factual reporting.
* The actual risk of COVID-19 hospitalization for a child under 18 who has COVID-19 is less than 0.2% per infection, or less than 1% per diagnosed case by current estimates; but it is 23% for an adult 65 or older, and even higher for those over 65 with co-morbidities.
* We often read that cases in children now make up over 20% of new infections. But news outlets often fail to point out that, as vaccination rates climb in older age groups and new infections fall in those groups, new cases in children will logically make up a greater proportion of all new infections.
* The data indicate that Delta is not significantly more harmful to children than previous variants.
* Road accidents and drowning kill many more children between 4 and 14 than COVID-19, yet we still let them get in cars and go to pools. Another example is that children are around 20 times more likely to contract COVID outside of school than in school. The media need to put COVID-19 numbers into perspective instead of quoting a stand-alone number that readers cannot adequately assess compared to other risks they are willing to accept.
* Depression, obesity, eating disorders, opioid overdoses, and suicidality have all gone up markedly during the pandemic. The CDC’s own research showed recently that children who were already struggling with weight gain more than doubled their weight increase during the pandemic. The report pointed to school and sports closures as an important cause. This is one of many tragic consequences of our failure to take into account all harms, not just those caused by COVID-19, during this pandemic.
* Since May, when the Delta variant spread worldwide, much attention has been paid to the question of whether vaccines work against this new variant as well as they did against earlier variants. The data show that vaccine protection has certainly decreased, at least against mild or asymptomatic infection. But the degree to which vaccines still offer protection to the general population from severe disease requiring hospitalization is being underestimated.
* The fact that the vast majority of children have multiple greater threats to their health and well-being than COVID-19, and that those threats to health worsened as we tried to shelter children from any risk of COVID, should have been quickly integrated into our public health plans. Instead, school and sports closure policies in many cases aggravated these threats, while failing to have any major impact on controlling COVID-19 spread. The fact that vaccines are incredibly effective—way more so than is often reported—at preventing hospitalizations and severe disease should have been constantly and consistently emphasized and re-emphasized.
* The problem of inadequate and inaccessible local data could be remedied relatively easily. Every state should promptly release hospitalization and mortality data—the two most important outcomes when it comes to COVID-19—in the form of simple tables and graphs. These should be stratified by vaccination status, age, race and ethnicity, local employment categories, and important co-morbidities such as obesity, diabetes status, and heart disease.
(Thanks to my daughter Sarah for pointing me to this important article. And thanks to Jackie Ross for many of the Afghanistan articles I cite. Thanks to everyone who sends me suggestions or makes comments below.)
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THE HEADLINES:
UN Chief: Afghanistan Faces 'Make-or-Break Moment' (Military.com)
* How to Fix Our Broken Relationship With COVID Math (Persuasion.com)
* Americans quit their jobs at a record pace in August (AP)
* Human-induced climate change has affected most of the population, new study shows -- Researchers used machine learning to analyze more than 100,000 studies of weather events and found four-fifths of the world’s land area has suffered effects linked to global warming. (WP)
* Boosters Are Complicating Efforts to Persuade the Unvaccinated to Get Shots --The number of eligible people still weighing whether to get a Covid vaccine has sharply dwindled, leaving an unvaccinated population that is mostly hard-core refusers. (NYT)
* Already, 18 weather disasters, each costing $1 billion or more, have hit the U.S. this year (WP)
* Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued an executive order banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates by any business, government office or other entity in the state. Abbott himself is fully vaccinated. But in Texas, only 52% of the population has been fully vaccinated. The state is still seeing an average of over 7,000 cases and more than 200 people dying from the disease each day. [HuffPost]
* A onetime associate of Donald Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani heads for a trial today that could shed light on how campaign finance operates behind the scenes, including during the Republican former president's failed 2020 reelection bid. (Reuters)
* U.S. task force proposes adults 60 and older should not take daily aspirin to prevent heart disease or stroke (CNN)
* The City of London Is Hiding the World’s Stolen Money -- Together with its territories overseas, Britain is instrumental in a global game of deceit. (NYT)
* The Trump nightmare looms again (WP)
* Italy's government is under growing pressure to dissolve the Forza Nuova neo-fascist group involved in violent weekend protests against a government drive to make the COVID-19 'Green Pass' mandatory for all workers. Since its foundation in 1997, Forza Nuova has repeatedly been accused of using violence against immigrants and police. (Reuters)
* ‘This Drop Came So Quickly’: Shrinking Schools Add to Hong Kong Exodus -- The Chinese territory is experiencing its biggest population drop in decades as residents flee political repression and a new “patriotic” curriculum. (NYT)
* To prevent the next pandemic, we must find the source of covid-19. China’s stonewalling is unacceptable. (Editorial Board/WP)
* Strong winds and dry, loose soil led to vast dust storms that shut down highways from the Sacramento Valley to the Mojave Desert. (SF Gate)
* Peat, plentiful in bogs in northern Europe, could be used to make sodium-ion batteries cheaply for use in electric vehicles, scientists at an Estonian university say. (Reuters)
* Inside the Massive and Costly Fight Against the Dixie Fire -- To battle the nearly one-million-acre Dixie fire, California launched a military-style operation. Some experts wonder whether that approach is sustainable. (NYT)
* Feds kill 8 pups in a wolf pack Idaho high-schoolers had been tracking for years, conservationists say (WP)
* Movie theaters are finally bouncing back from the pandemic, with solid turnout over the weekend for the latest James Bond spectacle. (Cal Today)
* Afghan minister wants good relations, needs more time on girls' education (Reuters)
* Lawmakers Press to Rescue Afghan Relatives of U.S. Service Members -- After a frenzied effort to evacuate Afghans who had worked with the U.S., members of Congress are now focusing on the stranded relatives of American troops. (NYT)
* Officials in Arcata, a town in Humboldt County, have decriminalized the use of psychedelic plants, including mushrooms and ayahuasca. (Lost Coast)
* The San Francisco Giants beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 1-0 Monday night to take a 2-1 game lead in the best of five playoff series. This is the first time the rivals have met in the post-season in their 130 year history. They also had the two best regular season records in MLB this year. (DW)
* Americans Demand New Form Of Media To Bridge Entertainment Gap While Looking From Laptop To Phone (The Onion)
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