The "true cost" of COVID misinformation

More left wing nonsense from The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Today’s airing of an episode of The Agenda was titled “The true cost of COVID misinformation” and included this alarming slide.

The accomplished researchers who drafted the report say they were not ideological nor biased in their treatment of the factual data they relied upon. But their conclusion that this was in some way a terrible indictment of “misinformation” was itself “misinformed”. Let’s review the bidding.

If I am to take the data on the slide at face value 2.35 million Canadians chose to avoid vaccines based on distrust of the government’s promotion of the vaccines as a “safe and effective” way to avoid infection, later softened (when it became clear the vaccines did not prevent infection) to ensuring any infection would be less harmful. The data claim (and I have no reason to dispute) that as a result 198,000 cases of COVID-19 resulted that might have been avoided. I also conclude that 2,152,000 of those who chose to avoid the vaccines did not get infected, and were correct that the vaccine posed more risk to them than a disease they did not contract despite being unvaccinated. Ninety two percent odds of not being infected are pretty good odds, and their choice did nothing to add to anyone’s costs or inconvenience.

The data say the population under study suffered 2,800 deaths in the 8-month period of the study, which was confined to people over aged 12 years. Canada keeps good statistics on death rates, and Statistics Canada data point to a death rate from all causes of 710 per 100,000 people per year, so in a population of 2.35 million you might expect 16,685 deaths from all causes.

Deaths from COVID-19 in Canada reportedly totaled 50,689 among 4.57 million cases of COVID, a death rate of .011%. If all 2.35 million unvaccinated persons had contracted COVID you might expect that 26,065 of them would have died from the disease. Only 2,800 deaths resulted from the 198,000 cases that the subject population did attract, which at 0.014% is not materially higher than Canada’s total experience of death from all causes. It seems being unvaccinated and becoming infected was not a materially higher risk for those choosing to remain unvaccinated.

Of the 198,000 unvaccinated in the study population who did catch COVID-19, only 13,000 required hospitalization. The study found the average cost of such hospitalization was $13,000 but went on to say the cost in total was $299 million. I can still remember grade 4 arithmetic and I am quite certain 13,000 x $13,000 = $169 million. The other $130 million comprises some clever math I am incapable of completing despite my extensive undergraduate and post-graduate education which included such advanced mathematics as linear algebra and theorems such as Stokes theorem, the Divergence Theorem, and Green’s Theorem not to mention LaPlace Transforms and Fourier Series. I can still get multiplication correct most of the time. Apparently the experts on The Agenda cannot.

The theme of the episode was that Canadians are entitled to accurate and honest information, protection against misinformation, and need to recognize that science is not exact and changes with ongoing studies during crises moments. I agree. Presenting data on TVO that doesn’t stand up to basic arithmetical analysis, pretending it exemplifies an unacceptable social cost and there is a need for change, is pretty left wing, with respect to the authors. It is left wing enough to qualify as “misinformation”.

Even accepting the inexplicable claim of a $299 million cost, that amounts to $127.23 for each of the 2.35 million who exercised their constitutional right to choose what medical procedures and interventions they wished to submit themselves to (regardless of how they made that decision) and is a trivial cost in context.

It is time for The AGENDA to get out of the business of promoting misinformation to Canadians, whatever their motive.