Rhetoric vs Logic

I try to keep things real here, though I sometimes descend into a rant or silliness. The People’s Blog might as well be a private discussion board as normal people don’t come here and if they do, they don’t linger. We can speak freely and acknowledge complications.

When speaking publicly, a less measured approach is more effective.

For example, lockdowns.

Realistically, I’m open to the idea that they may reduce infection rates temporarily in some cases but am against them because (a) the costs do not outweigh the benefits according to my own values and (b) we should not exchange freedom for a little safety except in extreme cases. It usually turns out badly, from banning dope to arbitrary War on Terror laws that are still on the books today.

If speaking in another forum I wouldn’t choose those words.

Ordinary people are not compelled by nuanced arguments. The world’s greatest orators didn’t move crowds by saying, “On one hand, I guess I can see their point of view on x, but on the other hand . . .” Did Cicero ever make a speech like that? Did Lincoln?

‘Entire families’ wiped out by Covid’s carnage in rural India, screams the headline.

The story went around the world via various mastheads but I tracked down the original to The Times of India.

Experiencing doubt, I decided to look into it.

In Basi . . . about three-quarters of the village’s 5,400 people are sick and more than 30 have died in the past three weeks.

Three-quarters? As about twenty percent of those infected with Covid never show symptoms, that means almost the whole village must be infected. I haven’t heard of that happening in any other place in the world (fact check me if I’m wrong).

Or perhaps they mean that 75% of people being tested are found to be positive. If they were only testing those presenting with symptoms that would make sense.

Thirty dead? Even if 100% of the village is infected, itself extremely unlikely, that gives us an infection fatality rate of 0.56%.

Doubt.

Some time ago I tried looking up total death rates for different countries to get a mathematical view of Covid’s impact. Curiously, one of the countries that compiles and releases its data first is Sweden.

What I found was so interesting that this post will only consider Covid in passing as it investigates broader trends.

Have a look:

You can see the Covid bump in 2020, likely to be repeated in 2021, but there are many other interesting things going on in this graph.

First, there’s a very obvious downward trend over the decades. You can see how improved nutrition, medicine etc. over the last century led to dramatically lower death rates, especially among infants.

There’s also a bulge over the 1980s. This is no doubt due to the age structure of society at that time as the graph shows crude death rates that are not adjusted for the age of the population.

Do you see those really big spikes? That’s what major pandemics look like. No doubt you can spot the Spanish Flu of a century ago.

Notice how early years have much more irregular death rates due to pandemics (mostly), harsh winters, crop failures and other perils of the pre-modern period. Compare to how death rates smooth over the twentieth century along with economic and technological development.

Most people understand that death rates have gradually declined since the Olden Days but it’s surprising to see that mortality has continued to drop even in the twenty-first century. In Sweden’s case, this decline is such that the Covid blip pushed 2020’s mortality rate up to what would have been normal a decade ago and still well below the average of two decades ago.