Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

When Numbers Replace Wisdom & Common Sense.

Fifty years ago , when I was working as an operational research consultant for a major industrial corporation, I was modelling the growth of electricity demand with an IT colleague because the company couldn’t rely on the official forecasts from the electricity companies.

It was a great piece of statistical modelling, taking into account every user and industrial sector development, but soon we realised that the electricity demand was following the growth of the economy. The company’s computer filled a large room, data was input with punch-cards and great sheets of paper printed out the results. Because we soon realized that the forecasts were so dependent on the UK economic growth forecasts, I arranged an appointment with a senior statistician at the Government’s National Statistics Department.

What a shock I had when this expert statistician and computer modeller told me, in his opinion economic growth was not dependent on labour, investment, capital, world market forces or any other usual measures, but primarily on the “spirit of the nation”. He then gave me the example of post war Britain’s growth versus that of Germany. We had won the war and everyone expected an easier life and the benefits normally gained by victors in war but the Germans had been destroyed and every man woman and child had to rebuild their lives from scratch. Hence the high-growth rate in Germany compared with our poor progress in Great Britain post-war. I left this interview much wiser and have, ever since, had severe reservations about any forecasts that leave out the human “X” factor.

Unfortunately, the world has moved on, we are now increasingly dependent on IT, computer modelling, algorithms and statistics and less and less on experience, wisdom and common-sense. So today we are witnessing a world thrown into chaos and crisis not entirely because of a new virus. This virus is very much like others in the past decades and like any virus it has its own unique character in the way of invading its host. No! What is different is the way that almost every government throughout the world has been driven by the science, by advice from the most prestigious organisations like the World Health Organisation and by leading epidemiologists using statistical algorithms of the way the virus spreads, by others forecasting the meltdown of our health systems and by most of the population driven by fear during this crisis, relying evermore on directives and protection by their governments.

Governments have likewise been forced to take decisions primarily based on the computer models of statisticians and epidemiologists and have feared to ignore these forecast at their peril, possibly losing credibility and support of the people. There are other possible reasons for the way this particular epidemic has grown into a major economic and health pandemic associated with global commercial forces, but I leave others to discuss what these may be. HERE 

In ancient times the forecasters or soothsayers came from a different priesthood who would study the entrails of slaughtered animals sacrificed in a religious ceremony to give guidance to the politicians. Their politicians balanced this knowledge of the expert seers with their own experience and wisdom before deciding policy. Today we are more civilised and have far more sophisticated scientific methods to guide our politicians, but are we any wiser?

To quote Lord Horder “ ..health does not necessarily depend upon Science at all. There were millions of healthy persons living before Science, as we understand it today, existed. 

“Nature taught man how to be healthy long before Science discovered the laws of health.” 

“ Direct action, force, suppression of individual freedom of choice and remedies directed towards the masses do not produce results that have any permanence.”

Health is the best protection against disease!

If we had a better understanding of what we mean by health we might not have had the 2020 Pandemic. Although most people have an intuitive understanding of what health is, we have been systematically taught a different definition.

A healthy organism, whether a primitive amoeba or a human, is by definition an organism that is able to respond effectively to its environment and survive. It is in fact response - able or more grammatically, it is responsible for its life and survival. 

Only when it ceases to be responsible, or unable or willing to respond to its environment does it suffer dis-ease or death.

Primitive life forms seem to develop and modify their responsiveness to their changing environment naturally and automatically otherwise they cease to survive as a species. Higher life forms including we humans can over-ride our innate ability to respond well to our changing environment. This may be in part due to the overwhelming power of our rapidly chasing environment, in part to primitive genetic programming that no longer aids survival, to our ability to rationalise any behaviour we choose to have or just to the fact that we have become increasingly distanced from the real world of nature.

Whatever the reason or more likely the multitude of reasons, we are now able to live without responsibility; we can eat to excess, we can eat  junk food, we can consume toxic or harmful substances such as drugs either recreational or medicinal, we can avoid exercise, we can get stressed over trivial matters, we can be mentally damaged from an early age simply by being born into a dysfunctional community or society. The end result is that the vast majority of us can no longer claim to be healthy, the vast majority of us are all dis-eased to some significant extent and therefore cannot live our lives, able to respond to the environment we find ourselves in an effective way for survival and well-being. 

The arrival of a novel virus finds us unable to resist it taking hold of us as a useful host. How successful it is depends on how weak or diseased the individual is. This is not primarily related to the age of the person, we note the young appear to be poor hosts perhaps because they have not yet developed any chronic disease, and that many elderly people who are healthy do not succumb whilst the majority who suffer the most are those who are chronically unhealthy with or without a recognised disease.

There are many who have claimed that an infection can be a valuable cleansing process and that the individual that recovers is stronger and healthier for the experience. This is not mainstream thinking today, when every effort is made to protect everyone from birth with an ever increasing cocktail of vaccinations, such that our infinitely complex immune system that has taken a million years to develop is overwhelmed or over-reactive. 

No, the future protection against the next virus will not be more of the same but a paradigm shift towards promoting healthy living. Sadly there is little profit in such a venture and many of us have grown accustomed to a way of life that is unhealthy and that promotes chronic disease. 

A new generation of doctors, health workers and individuals who hold health as the prime force will be needed to be backed by an economic system that also puts health first over profit or short-term alleviation and suppression of symptoms. 

A new generation of people who are more in tune with nature and who know we must be guardians of our natural environment if we are to survive as a species.

Check out a vast array of information to help you make changes in your lifestyle and regain a state of health you may have had when young on my website : HERE