Ontario reports 2400 cases

Vincent J. Curtis

20 May 21

After two successive days of daily case count numbers being below the trend line, on May 20, Ontario reported 2400 cases, a number above the trend line.  The numbers went from 1600 to 2400, a jump of fifty percent.  This behavior is a phenomenon of statistics known as “reversion to mean.”  That, and the shape of the daily cases curve being characteristic indicate that the spread of the virus in Ontario is a stochastic phenomenon.

Statistics imply no cause-effect relationship, though there may be underlying cause-effect relationships that control the stochastic behavior.  The significance of pure stochastic behavior is that the lockdown measures have had no impact whatsoever on the underlying cause-effect relationships that express themselves as COVID transmission.  The shape of the third wave (as well as the first and second waves) was determined entirely by statistics and were in no way modified by lockdown measures.  The waves would have been the same whether Ontario had locked down or not.

We shouldn’t be surprised that COVID transmission is a stochastic phenomenon since all of the modelling, from the first warning of a coming wave of death, was based on statistics.  The lesson to be learned is that lockdown and stay-at-home orders achieved nothing, except to tear-up civil rights and devastate Ontario’s finances.

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