In August last year despairing of the mismanagement of many issues caused by the Pandemic I pointed out the considerable failure among politicians, the media and even scientists and advisers to properly understand the statistics behind the issues.[i] I want to return to this theme as it’s not getting better, if anything it’s getting worse. The pandemic may well be one of the causes, or indeed the main cause of these difficulties, but we will not solve them by constantly making mistakes over the size and direction of the threat and indeed what issues actually matter. Let’s first take the case of inflation. Increasingly during this year there has been concern over the pace of development of inflation and whether it was transitory as central banks have insisted or indeed longer term. It is clearly not transitory as there are major underlying inflationary pressures, some no doubt due to the pandemic but others due to other global trends such as the retreat of globalisation. For many years the developed countries have exported much of their production to China and other low-cost producers with the result that prices of these goods have stayed lower than would otherwise have been the case. That is starting to change, partly owing to the pandemic, and partly owing to political pressures that too many manufacturing jobs have been lost and it would be desirable for developed economies to regain control of the sources of production. But at the same time the workers in these countries and indeed their politicians want their wages to be high and so inevitably the costs of the products they make and sell will be higher.

When energy prices have risen by 50% or more and some grocery products have risen in price by 30% or more and indeed, I could give many other examples of substantial price rises in the past 12 to 18 months, it seems odd that the CPI is only showing about 4% price increase in UK and about 6% in the US. But here again there is another problem. Actually, the US measures the CPI in a different way from the UK. For example, it includes property and in the US property prices have risen substantially recently. Over many years price rises in assets like domestic housing in the UK have been substantially more than the CPI has recorded and indeed this is one of the terrible things that is happening in our economy with low interest rates allowing asset prices to rise beyond the reach of those who want to get onto the housing ladder.

There are other difficulties with the basket of goods that are recorded in the CPI which would probably only reflect about 50% of overall consumer spending. If prices do rise consumers tend to substitute, going for cheaper goods or other smaller items. The CPI cannot reflect this. It is also too slow to recognise changes in technology, as in the long-term trend for prices of consumer electronics to remain stable while the product’s performance is increased.

The latest issue where the politicians are failing to understand the statistics is the so-called Omicron variant of Covid19. We are told that the evidence is such that they must issue a new range of restrictive measures as well as encouraging us to again work from home, apparently while also encouraging us to continue to hold office parties. But what is the evidence? A few weeks ago, it was first reported in South Africa. The doctor who reported it says that the symptoms are mild in comparison with previous variants. There have been few hospitalisations and no deaths to date. The hospitalisations are primarily among the young, few of whom have been vaccinated, and they are shorter term. The World Health Organisation has so far not recorded a single death from the variant. The European Medicines Agency and the US Centre for Disease Control also believe that the effects are mild. In the UK there have to date been reported just over 1,000 cases of which the Secretary of State for Health is only aware of 19 cases admitted to hospital.

While I appreciate that this can change, it is not evidence to justify yet more restrictions on our freedom which will damage mental and physical health, the education of the young, and the economy which is still well below where it was two years ago. We are also told that the new variant is more transmissible and if that is the case and the symptoms are mild then that could be a good thing as it would drive out the other variants leaving us as we are with the common cold with a disease that affects large numbers seasonally but rarely kills. The common cold is also a coronavirus.

In January, Covid 19 was the number one cause of death in the UK if you accept the questionable practice of recording the cause of death as Covid 19 if a positive test had been recorded in the previous four weeks, even when there were other obvious and more critical causes. By May, using the same definition, it had fallen to the number 26 cause of death. In January, there is no doubt that the majority of hospitalisations from any cause came from Covid19. By November, Covid 19 had fallen to a much smaller proportion of total hospitalisations, the vast majority of whom were unvaccinated.

Another recent example of innumeracy has been the highly unsatisfactory consideration of climate change. The UK has tried to commit itself to targets that would apparently lead the world. But this is all just boosterism. The UK has committed itself to Net Zero emissions by 2050 but what the politicians mean is net zero in terms of what we produce. However, we will continue to import products from countries, particularly China, which are working if at all to much later targets and continue to build numerous coal-fired power stations. Therefore, the UK will be nowhere near Net Zero emissions in terms of what we consume.

A similar point can be made about the UK’s foolish commitment to prevent the sale of carbon-powered vehicles after 2030. But changing your car from a petrol driven engine to an electric powered one only moves the pollution. It does not eliminate it unless all of the power comes from non-carbon powered sources and that won’t happen for a long time.

These vehicles all require large quantities of particular minerals such as lithium for the batteries. Mining is highly damaging to the environment, one of the most dangerous industries, and uses a high level of fossil fuel in its activities. That won’t change any time soon.

It is hard to know whether these errors come from my theme of innumeracy or whether the politicians and their advisers do understand but just dissemble.

---