Becoming a Healthy Skeptic

In the age of disinformation, it is important to adopt a healthy attitude of skepticism when reading any news article. Statistics can, and are often skewed to prove a point. They can be twisted to serve a purpose in propagating a narrative or agenda that can be purposefully misleading to the reader. We tend to think of the statistics given by (our preferred) news source, website, or pundit as being unaffected by the age of disinformation. They are not.

We are bombarded with news and information nearly every second of every day. It makes it nearly impossible to decipher what is true and what is not. We simply do not have the time, attention or patience to read the articles in entirety or the details of the study’s conclusion. We do not notice what is not emboldened.

In fact, we humans have responded to this by adapting our minds to skim the surface and avoid the details. We go off the headline, the soundbite or whatever the most compelling piece of information in the article is – thinking we may grasp the whole story by just skimming the surface. But the devil is in the details.?

In observation of this trend of disinformation, I’ve noticed myself, my peers, and even those who I hold in tremendous regard, falling prey to a misleading statistic or headline that doesn’t quite tell the whole story, because, well… how could you not?

It is now more important than ever we do not succumb to our emotional and irrational side, as we are especially sensitive to it in times of panic. Irrationality begets irrationality, and that spells disaster. In order to resolve the great toilet paper crisis of 2020, we must stop irrational panic at its source, ourselves. “The first step toward becoming rational is to understand our fundamental irrationality.”?- Robert Greene

Below are a few things to keep in mind when reading a news article and how to properly consider statistics. I will use examples that involve COVID-19. Please note, COVID-19 is a serious threat and warrants an immediate and serious response. However, the spread of misinformation surrounding this disease has created unnecessary panic, promoted ill-preparedness and has decimated our collective societal response.

Beware of Headlines – Understanding the motivation

“Global death toll for new Coronavirus SOARS past 800 to overtake SARS" "Coronavirus death SOARS to 7% in Italy – Is America Next?"

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Headlines seldom tell the whole story they insidiously portray, and rarely are they even truthful, as the truth, fortunately, is often banal. Like the class clown, they must go to more and more extreme measures in order to grab and hold your attention. Even making ‘mistakes’ as CBS did, airing footage of Italy’s overtaken hospitals and claiming it to be NY.

Engineering Responses

When you read a headline that promotes an emotional response, take a step back before you react. Just like any company, there is fierce competition to buy their product. In the age of the internet, the product is your attention, your clicks and most importantly the access to your social media.

Emotion is the catalyst to action. Therefore, they MUST elicit an emotional response in order to accomplish what they want. And what they want is for you to react, share and comment to others about their story.??

Remember, everyone has a motivation, an agenda or some reason as to why they are informing you, and it is not out of the goodness of their heart.

What are they calculating? Understand the definitions behind the words

Typically, we will see a piece of statistical information displayed in a headline of a news source. We must understand what they are measuring (and likely claiming) from a definitive standpoint. Words have definitions and we must hold them accountable to those definitions, or else everything is arbitrary.

Most notably in the current crisis, is the ‘death-rate,’ of COVID-19. So, when taking your first step back, read what they mean by “death-rate.” Is it defined simply as, “if I get this virus, I have X% chance of dying?”

Implied meaning

Insinuation is often more insidious than outright lying. Why? When we skim articles or only read the headline, we find kernels of truth placed within, that lead us to assume the entire statement must then be true.

Certainly, the implied meaning of ‘death-rate’ is that if you are infected with COVID-19, the rate is the percentage chance you have to die. Moreover, leaving out key words is effective manipulation as well. The statement made by WHO on March 3rd is a perfect example of how one may accomplish this. The wording they used was, “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died.” However, the media took this and ran with it by defining the death-rate of COVID-19 being 3.4%.?The implication then is you have a 3.4% chance of dying if you are infected. This is, of course, inaccurate in many ways and has been grossly misrepresentative of the statement. However, including a disclaimer in the title doesn’t make a good soundbite (though some responsible media did).

Enforce definition

While there are a multitude of things wrong with this statistic taken it at face value, in this step we must first look at the defined word itself. ‘death-rate,’ for example, has a myriad of subclasses according to the CDC and doesn’t mean at all what the media is trying to portray it as. We would hope these two organizations would be sound enough to not spread incorrect information, but we certainly cannot count on the media to not sensationalize it.

Understand – these words are purposefully chosen as they are a dubious version of the truth. These engineered words and phrases tend to turn into “buzzwords”, which end up meaning something entirely different. Recall, the implied meaning is meant to promote an inflammatory response – ‘DEATH-rate.’ They may as well write it in blood. The media will expand the definition of these words, shift it to the extreme and eventually redefine them. This principle applies to all subjects, not just the current pandemic.

How to interpret the data: Don’t assume accuracy – verify it

After understanding the definitions of the words/proportions used, it is important to not take the numbers we see as fact, at least at first. Numbers can be deceiving, particularly in the wrong hands, but even in those without malicious intent, they don’t tell the full story.

There are so many variables at play in nearly every study, but especially in those of an unknown entity – think COVID-19. Even the “knowns” should be critically evaluated to an extent. Let me be clear, this is not to encourage you to disbelieve any and all data that you see, rather to better understand that data evolves, changes and can be manipulated to prove a point.

Numbers aren’t just numbers

Going back to the ‘death-rate,’ let us recall the 3.4% statistic in China that was perpetuated by the media. Assume we take the implied definition of ‘death-rate’ as the following: “If I am diagnosed with COVID-19, I have a 3.4% chance of dying,” and let’s examine why this becomes problematic when we delve into the details.

Firstly, it assumes the information on deaths reported is accurate – wherein the CCP is reporting all and any deaths/confirmed cases to the WHO.

It also assumes all deaths are directly due to COVID-19. However, it is shown that the deaths could be due to a multitude of comorbidities – In this study for instance, onset sepsis and septic shock is the main contributor (~59%) to fatality of those who perished from COVID-19. Does that mean COVID-19 is not responsible for the development of sepsis, and ultimately death? No, but it is important to note because any number of mild to severe ailments can be deadly to someone who has an already weak immune system. Ask yourself, with this model, would a person who is hit by a car and dies, but also has COVID-19, be included in the death count?

Finally, it assumes we know all active and resolved cases. What is more likely to be recorded, an asymptomatic case (~50% according to the recent Iceland study) of COVID-19, or a death directly due to the symptoms? And which direction does that push the mortality rate to?

Ask yourself – What are they not telling me?

Again, looking at ‘death-rate,’ is it fair that they generalize the mortality to a one-size fits all approach when we know, from a factual standpoint, that is not true? The virus kills ages and genders in a demonstrably different manner. At this point, it is widespread knowledge that this is the case, however, we still see the ‘death-rate’ plastered over headlines as a simple average. Is it true from a pure number’s perspective? Sure, but it is intellectually misleading.

While we cannot demand every little detail, as with comorbidities, we must understand that there are details behind the number that make it much less scary for the average individual.

Ultimately, you need to understand that there are details that are unaccounted for. Seldom with anything, let alone statistics, can you make sweeping generalizations about these things, because the answer is usually, “well it depends.” This is especially true when it comes to things we do not understand and things that are new.

In the case of COVID-19 however, we must understand that there is not a factual ‘death-rate’ yet. There is a simple calculation of one unknown divided by a more-or-less known that equals an incredibly exaggerated version of the truth, which brings us to our final point about numbers.

What do they not know and WHY?

In the case with COVID-19, we see complaints about misinformation, misdirection and contradictions among politicians, different countries and even professional healthcare institutions like the CDC and WHO. What we don’t realize, while some of them are spreading misinformation purposefully, is that this situation is rapidly changing and developing. The fact is, we DON’T know much about this virus yet, because these things take time. As of today, the U.S has tested only approximately ~0.7% of its population for confirmatory tests.

Now with serologic antibody tests coming out, exponentially more knowledge surrounding the spread, and how extensive it truly is, will become apparent. With some new studies and pre-prints (not published/peer reviewed yet) coming out around this, many including these from Scotland, The Netherlands and Finland are stating that despite initial estimates that for every confirmed case of COVID-19 there are 10-20 that go unnoticed, now their pre-print may indicate (after you do some math) that as many as 30-75 cases per confirmed, are out there. That is a massive difference.

To put that into perspective, if there are 1 million cases confirmed in the U.S (as of now, there are ~620,000), that would mean in reality, there have been and/or are, 30 million cases in the studies lowest projection. In the highest, it would mean there are 50 million cases in the U.S, meaning 1/6 of the population.

Understand – The power of an unknown variable, as in something like a global pandemic, is unprecedented. Take the pre-print in Scotland for example; If this is true (which many have speculated the implication of the conclusion prior to this) that significantly changes the perspective on the virus and its impact to the world. This is both a good and bad thing, but mostly good. Let's examine.

The Bad – If 50% of those who are infected with COVID-19 are asymptomatic, then the virus may spread at a phenomenal rate. This is because, unlike most illnesses we see, people are walking around actively spreading it, simply due to the fact they have no idea they are infected.

The Good – If for every single confirmed case, there are 30-75 missed cases, then we stand to see an order of magnitude decrease in the average mortality rate. For example, there are ~2 million global confirmed cases, thus if we look at the top end of the projection and say for every 1 confirmed case, there are 50 missed cases, that means there are 100 million global cases. There have been ~120,000 deaths. Thus, the current ‘death-rate’ (simple proportion) is 5%. But the true ‘death-rate’ would be approximately 0.12%. Sound familiar?

The essence of the message is, that in ongoing pandemics, these proportions and rates are meaningless until we get larger sample sizes, scalable testing and antibody testing. Take the H1N1 pandemic for example. The mortality rate for this virus ended up being many orders of magnitude less than that of what it was predicted to be. The point is to not compare the two as, obviously, the lethality of COVID-19 is far worse, but to again put things back into perspective. We simply cannot and DO NOT know what any of these true proportions are, as there is a reason why they change daily.

In Conclusion – Ask yourself the basic questions: why, what, who and how (and then what again)

The overarching message in this is to critically analyze statistics themselves. Go to the primary source of information (if you can find it, sometimes media may not provide a link, but that should raise a red flag immediately), and better educate yourself on the methodology and utility of the numbers you are given.

When you read a headline, ask yourself, 'why' are they proliferating this message? What is their motivation? Second, learn about the details or the 'what.' What is the implication, the explicit truth and the details of that truth. Third, 'who' is the primary source for the study and 'how' did they go about doing it? What variables did they account for, miss or simply did not know?

Following these steps, you will gather enough information to critically analyze the statistics, better understand the context and most likely and most importantly, delay or stop the inevitable emotional and irrational response when reading an alarming headline. While this article referenced COVID-19 as a relevant example, these steps should be applied to all subjects that utilize statistics.

I truly hope this helped and feel free to reach out to me if you have any further questions, here on LinkedIn.

Finally, The COVID-19 pandemic is lethal and should be taken very seriously. No one truly knows the severity yet, and until then, everyone should do their part to stop the spread and possibly save your high at-risk family and friends. The point I am drawing in this article is, that we simply do not know for sure yet the overarching severity. Better to be conservative and informed than overzealous and uninformed.

THANK YOU to all the scientists, healthcare workers and researchers working tirelessly to mitigate this crisis.

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Disclaimer: I am not a statistician and nor am I an "expert." I am simply encouraging you, the reader, to critically analyze any piece of inflammatory information you come across, as often its not as bad as they make it seem, or the other way around. I pulled most data during the week of April 12th surrounding that of COVID-19. The situation is rapidly changing and as stated, some of the detailed information about COVID-19 may be obsolete when you read the paper. Sources detailed in hyperlinks.

#COVID19 #Coronavirus #statistics #media #panic #disinformation #COVID19deathrate