The Thing About Data

 For about six weeks now....the German gov't crowd has hyped up the situation of Covid-infected folks.....vax'ed-up and non-vax, and how it's a overwhelming number of non-vax who end up in hospitals.  If you follow the reporting, it's typically 90-percent non-vax and 10-percent vax'ed-up.

So this morning, if you gaze at Focus chatter.....there's a twist on this number business.

There was some research done by a newspaper over the Bavarian state office....the Health and Food Safety folks....who has the duty of collecting up data in Bavaria.  The numbers didn't really match up.  So questions came up and what can be said now....this office ended up with a data 'gap'.  They really didn't know the true number of people who were vax'ed-up versus non-vax. So they created a dataset called 'unknown'.

Yes, three columns.....vax-ed-up, non-vax, and unknown.

So here's the amusing thing.....they pushed the unknown crowd into the non-vax reputation.  

For a particular week in November, there were around 81,700 cases of new Covid.  Out of this group....the vax'ed-up group made up around 11-percent of the group, and officially....the non-vax made up the rest.  But here's the problem....70-percent of the 81,700 were UNKNOWN.  They simply mislabeled (either accidentally or intentionally) the unknowns as non-vax.

Common theme?  Focus points out....Hamburg has the same method of accounting.

One might suspect if you dug into all sixteen states.....most all run some accounting of Covid incidences in an amusing way.  

Around two months ago, to hype up the situation at one hospital....some nurse walked around and attempted to get out of patients their status.  So she had some chart for the news guy....90-percent of her patients in the ward were non-vax.  Did the patients provide safe reliable information (verbally)....while in a fairly weakened state or near total exhaustion?  The nurse didn't have access to the patient's personal data....so you have to wonder, from this great two-minute report....was the data reliable?  

Personally, if you were to start collecting data here....you'd have to gain the data....vaxed or non-vax, then for the vax crowd, you'd have to ask what type of vaccine (AstraZenica, BionTech, etc).  You might find yourself in a case where 20-percent of your hospital customers are vax'ed-up but virtually all of them are AstraZenica folks....which would tell an amazing story.  Added to this....you'd also have to say how long ago the shot occurred (3 months, 6 months, or 9 months).  It could well be all of the vax'ed-up folks in the hospital.....are 9 month folks....meaning the antibodies are zeroed out.  

In simple terms, there's marginal crappy data, and there's highly valuable data....which currently, the system is lacking.