COVID
Anti-Vaxxers Are Far More Deadly than the Taliban
Taliban — 2,372 US soldiers in 20 years. Anti-vaxxers — 27,588 US deaths in August.
Synopsis
This heading on my Facebook post was to highlight just how deadly and irresponsible anti-vaxxers are. It generated my longest Facebook response string ever, even more than any one of my articles bashing Trump, Pelosi, or the Supreme Court.
One naysayer posted the book link on How to Lie with Statistics on a separate post, implying that there was no connection.
There is a direct connection, although my manager once said, “What is obvious to you may not be obvious to anyone else.”
I’ll explain here what the connection is, a couple of brief examples of how to lie with statistics, and why none apply here.
How to Lie with Statistics (common examples)
The book contained nine examples, but I can provide two of the most common.
Averages sound a lot more simple than they are. You are familiar with sports averages, temperature averages, and many others. They present the general idea.
For example, these four sets of numbers (1, 99), (49, 51), (25, 50, 75), (1,2,3,…, 97,98,99) produce the same average of 50, although they are wildly different.
I used individual numbers, not averages.
Another example was a graph showing wide differences for 6 values. The problem was perspective. You saw only the tips of the bars, not the entire bar, which showed that the values were within 1% of each other, not 5 or 10 times as large.
Size differences need to be interpreted properly
I think the implication for my post was that the numbers are not connected, the sizes misconstrued, and the time frames are different.
Why this comparison
- Both Antivaxxers & Taliban have been emotionalized in the current news
- Deaths were caused directly or indirectly by intentional actions of others
- Month vs. 20-year numbers — number size had to be close enough for the readers to grasp
The Anti-vaxxer/Taliban connection
The Taliban intentionally went out to kill US soldiers. When they were successful, soldiers were dead.
The anti-vaxxer does not go out to kill anybody, but through their actions people are dead — usually them, their family, friends, or strangers.
Their intentions are not relevant, Just the results
In both cases, the results are the same. People are dead. That is the connection.
Over 99% of the people who died of COVID in August were not vaccinated. Also, cases for the vaccinated who caught it were less severe.
Size and timeframe
Most people have difficulty visualizing extremely huge quantities beside small ones, like an ant next to an elephant.
For example, it’s not hard to compare one month and two years, but it would be much more difficult visualizing one month compared with two centuries. You would expect similar measurements for one month to be much smaller than one for 2 years.
I could have annualized the COVID numbers and compared 2,372 to 662,112, but that would have been a lie with statistics. There is no way to know if the number over 20 years would have been more or less. That would have been playing with numbers.
Everybody’s watched TV and movies. You would expect many more to die in a war, which makes these numbers even more impressive.
More than 10 times as many people died in their peaceful home environment during August than soldiers died in 20 years of war! That is with real numbers.
Data source
Here is what I posted: • Taliban — 2,372 US soldiers in 20 years. • Anti-vaxxers — 27,588 COVID August deaths in the US. You can subtract up to 900 YTD vaccinated deaths from the antivaxxers, which varies depending on the study source, if you wish. Unfortunately, I don’t have an exact number for August.
My numbers are from the New York Times. The CDC reported 25,383 vs. 27,588 — a minuscule difference for these purposes and easily explainable.
Depending which source you use, the COVID numbers are 10.63 or 10.70 times as large for one month as the Taliban number for 20 years.
Conclusion
During the Smallpox epidemic, the anti-vaxxers claimed that if someone got smallpox and died, it was the will of God, and they were not going to thwart God. Now, they have taken the place of God in the argument and won’t let the government thwart their will.
It’s time for anti-vaxxers to quit throwing tantrums like children and take responsibility, either for getting a vaccine and saving lives, maybe their own, or for taking lives.
