The unsustainable crude data of Speranza and ISS, at the service of the official narrative
On the occasion of the posthumous press conference, on 10 January 2022, of the most rigid and discriminatory measures in the world for the limitation of the individual freedoms of the unvaccinated, the Minister of Health Speranza showed data depicted in a slide with men of various colors and size. Beyond the appropriateness of the representation, one figure immediately caught the eye of many observers on social media (but not, significantly, of the journalists present): the data dated exactly one month earlier, on 12 December 2021.
As the detailed analyzes by Thomas Müntzer (whom I thank) on his Twitter account inform us, in Italy the only body able to "cross" the data of the pandemic with those of the citizens' vaccination status is the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS ). Only the ISS is therefore able to provide a measure of the incidence of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations or deaths between unvaccinated and vaccinated with one, two or three doses.
The data held by the ISS are not public, but are disclosed weekly through a bulletin, usually published on Saturday morning ( here you can find the archive of the weekly bulletins); access to data is strictly regulated by the body, which provides for its sharing only with legal persons, not private citizens, reserving the unquestionable right to accept or refuse the request.
The slide shown by Minister Speranza comes directly from the bulletin of January 5, 2022 , in particular from table 6 on page 26. This table shows (among other things) the rate of people admitted to intensive care (ICU) per 100,000 inhabitants, for unvaccinated, vaccinated less than 120 days, vaccinated with boosters , and so on.
First of all, we note that the dates provided in the Speranza slide are incorrect: the reference period goes from 12 November to 12 December 2021, while the bulletin for the same data shows the period from 19 November to 19 December.
In any case, the numbers under the now famous colored men of Hope reproduce (almost) faithfully the row of the table indicated as "total". At this point, the more curious have begun to verify the internal consistency of the information provided by Speranza using the other data present in the ISS bulletin, in particular those in table 5 on page 23. This table contains the actual number of people who have been hospitalized in TI in the same period used for the calculation of the efficiency shown by the minister: in the case of the unvaccinated this number equals 1,202.
For each category, dividing the actual number of people admitted to intensive care by the admissions rate per 100,000 inhabitants, the number of people making up the category under consideration should by definition be obtained.
Doing this simple exercise with Speranza's data yields a total of 5.2 million unvaccinated. The data is in contrast both with the slide itself, which shows the value of 6.6 million unvaccinated, and with the bulletin of 21 December and for the date of 4 December (in the middle of the time interval in question) in the table 4 reports the data of 7 million unvaccinated: even to the less accustomed to mathematics it will appear evident that the use of a population lower than the real one has the effect of increasing the incidence of admissions to intensive care for the unvaccinated and therefore dishonestly amplifying the beneficial effects of the vaccine.
Following various requests from the web and print media, the body provided a partial explanation of this discrepancy together with the following bulletin, through the FAQ section of its site: navigating in this hazy sea it seems to understand that the value of final incidence is the result of the average between the values in the different age groups weighted by the incidence of the age groups on the total Italian population and not on the total vaccinated population.
Who reads the bulletins is not given to know which weights actually used, making it impossible or almost impossible to reproduce the calculation made. The choice then appears at least questionable, as it would reproduce a hypothetical incidence rate if the entire Italian population were not vaccinated. In reproducing this scenario, however, other factors that would contribute to moving the incidence in the opposite direction are not considered, for example:
- The presence of recovered patients subjected to a dose that falls within the vaccinated category for ISS, but which would reduce the rate of IT in a hypothetical unvaccinated Italy;
- The fact that those vaccinated less than 14 days after the onset of Covid-19 symptoms are considered unvaccinated (definition on page 21 of the latest bulletin) while some evidence seems to show that many infections occur precisely in this time frame.
From these carelessness and inconsistencies, the bias that grips the government and the ISS in the dissemination of epidemiological data is evident: rather than a scientific presentation of the evidence currently in our possession, the aim is to amplify regardless of the data in favor of mass vaccination in a clumsy way and surreptitious and without there being an apparent real need, given the very high rates of vaccination already achieved in spring 2021, especially among the population most at risk.
In response to the numerous criticisms, the Institute's official Twitter account ( @istsupsan ) stated that it had provided "the population already corrected for age and reference period, not the 'raw' one used" in previous reports: an explanation that has aroused reactions between amazement and hilarity, unleashing the hashtag #datigrezz on social networks . Moreover, precisely by not disseminating the "raw data" in open form, the ISS leaves the door open to any hypothesis of manipulation, whether justified or not.
Manipulations of statistical data have many precedents in history. Not very reassuring precedents. The most emblematic example is perhaps the reverse type: statisticians punished for having reported correct data, which denied the official version of power.
The first general population census of the Soviet Union recently established took place in 1926. This census recorded a total population of just over 147 million inhabitants in the six republics that made up the Union at the time.
The second census, scheduled for the end of 1933, was postponed several times. Beyond the technical and practical pretexts, the real cause of the deferral was the famine produced by the forced collectivization of the countryside. This famine, officially denied by the Soviet regime, had caused an unspecified, but very high, number of victims, especially in Ukraine.
The census finally took place in January 1937. The Soviet authorities, as evidenced by a series of statements by Stalin himself, expected massive population growth as a result of the alleged improvement in the living conditions of workers and peasants. The results, however, were disappointing: the population recorded by the statisticians, despite a series of expedients of the regime to favor multiple registrations, was just 162 million inhabitants, far below expectations. Even worse, the regions most affected by the famine showed an alarming decrease in population: they numbered just under 26 and a half million Ukrainians, compared to more than 31 million in 1926; 2.8 million Kazakhs against 3.9.
On March 25, 1937, those responsible for the census, including the director of the Olympij Aristarchovich Kvitvkin office, were arrested for sabotage in one of the minor trials of the Stalinist purges. Sentenced to death on September 28, they were executed on the same day and buried in a mass grave. The census was canceled and replaced by another, more manipulated one, in 1939, although even the new census could not hide a decrease, albeit more contained, in the Ukrainian population.
This episode gives us an important lesson: far from being a neutral discipline, statistics are a fundamental instrument of power. Power needs data to support its choices: this is particularly true in dictatorial and authoritarian regimes, but even in theoretically democratic regimes the relationship between data and political decisions is very subtle and manipulations are always lurking.
The official narrative on Covid , its consequences and the benefits of vaccines has been fed on incomplete statistical data, not publicly available, manipulated or presented in an intellectually dishonest way. This is central to the information monopoly: if no one can contest the data because they cannot access it, any opposition to health policies and the choices deriving from these policies can be dismissed as unscientific and conspiratorial. A democratic regime, to encourage free and informed discussion on its decisions, would make all the information in its possession available in the form of open data, accessible to all without particular requirements, up to the level of anonymised individual data. When, on the other hand, the body responsible for health policies presents incorrect, misleading, contradictory information, refusing to make the data public, hiding behind absurd explanations such as those referring to "raw data", refusing to respond to requests for access to data , we have already largely embarked on the slippery slope at the bottom of which is the end of substantial democracy.
The post The unsustainable roughness of Speranza and ISS data, at the service of the official narrative appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/linsostenibile-grezzitudine-dei-dati-di-speranza-e-iss-al-servizio-della-narrazione-ufficiale/ on Tue, 18 Jan 2022 03:50:00 +0000.