Grant Finch
Maori and Polynesian peoples have a different genetic makeup to other inhabitants of New Zealand. That can be the only explanation for their increased vulnerability to Covid. Constantly we are told they need preferential treatment and extra funding to counter a virus that affects them more than others. This ‘truth’ plays havoc with ideas regarding equality, because how can people be treated as equal when they are genetically not so?
Of course, nobody actually believes Maori and Polynesian are genetically different. The push for preferential treatment because of difference selectively ignores the behaviour and living conditions of people, which is the main reason for their increased vulnerability. All we are shown are statistics, graphs showing the disparity between various ethnicities informing us how one group is disadvantaged relative to another.
Statistics are just cold numbers. They are fed to a public who want a simple binary world of good and bad where bad can be reversed by correct information. For many often inexplicable reasons we have given our trust to statistics and choose not to dig down into them and see if they actually attest to reality.
The belief that a forty-year-old man was an old man in the past is based on a misreading of statistics. Statistics concluded an average age based on the longevity of the mass. Many children dying young pulled the average down. Look in any graveyard or history book and you will find some males dying well into their 80s and 90s. The statistics were correct but what was believed as a consequence was not.
Covid has been a heyday for manipulating an unwary public with statistics. We were told recently by a spokesman for a machine (he’s a computer modeller) that New Zealand needed to reach a vaccination rate of 90% to limit annual deaths to 50. 80% vaccination would mean 7,000 deaths. From this information, it’s easy to extrapolate information of our own. 50 (at 90%) is 140x fewer deaths than 7,000 (at 80%). 7,000 is 140x fewer than 980,000 deaths (at 70%) and 980,000 is 140x fewer than 137,200,000 (at 60%) See where this is going! That’s right, into the realm of fantasy; and as I read the other day (in a play on ‘garbage in garbage out’,) ‘fantasy in, fantasy out ’.
I’m sure modellers create extremely complex scenarios with masses of data, but that is as capable of hiding the truth as much as revealing it. As a young man I knew an accountant who worked for the local water board. He was morally troubled that the board was selectively using various tools (figures, pie charts, graphs, percentages etc.) to present information in ways that coloured the facts to their advantage. That was over 40 years ago, and the tools in the hands of the diffusers now are considerably more advanced.
Modern societies are awash with statistics produced by machines. That is problem enough, given that humanity is a collection of individual humans complete with their own quirks and peculiarities and not a one size fits all machine. But that those printouts from machines are then ‘interpreted’ by people our culture has elevated to the level of ‘expert’ (who have their own peculiarities) should give us reason to question the conclusions.
Rather than produce figures that agree with all inquirers’ data, or alternatively clearly explain, to knowledgeable questions, the basis for your conclusions, the insiders vilify any dissenting view. This should be sufficient indication that the ‘facts’ are not as factual as we are led to believe; ‘the lady doth protest too much methinks!’
