They know not what they do

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Nov 20

RE: Hamilton surpasses 500 active COVID-19 cases.  Hamilton Spectator of this date.

With 500 COVID cases, having fun with statistics becomes easy, given that Hamilton has a population of 500,000.  It’s worth exploring why the Health Nazis limit us as to crowd size.

Assuming all 500 COVID cases are wondering the streets of Hamilton, there is a 1 in 1000 chance that the next person you meet with be a case.  If Hamiltonians were grouped into blocks of 50, there is a 95 percent chance (or 2-σ) that no one in your group will be a case.  And if you are in the unlucky group, given that the transmission ratio Re is only 1.1, the chances of your not getting the virus from the case is 98 percent.

But the panicky pills in Queen’s Park have limited group sizes to 5.  Grouping Hamiltonians into blocks of 5 means that there is a 99.5 percent chance (or 3-σ) that the group you’re in will have no cases, but if you’re in an unlucky group the chances of your not getting the virus is down to 75 percent.  What you gain by reducing group size, you lose in greater likelihood of catching it because of small group size.

The picture gets much better if many of the COVID cases are grouped together and aren’t wandering the streets.

This illustration shows two things.  First, that the doctors fixed on a 3-σ probability to determine group size for reasons so-far not explained; and, second, that reducing group size doesn’t help after a certain point.  That’s why the pandemic rises and falls despite what the doctors have ordered.  They really don’t understand statistics or the law of diminishing returns, and won’t hire a mathematician to help them.

However, people can see how little availing these medical directives actually help.  People can see the doctors are down to trial and error and won't admit it.

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