No right answer

A couple of days ago I suggested there was never a 'right' way to write the tax book. The tax people just have to do the best they can, juggling with the various interests involved. Today I am reminded by the piece at reference 2 that the same sort of thing can be true of statistics.

I read that the shiny new and fancily titled NHS Health Security Agency, has significantly reduced our health security by scoring an own goal with vaccination statistics, by publishing a table which says that people over 40 who are vaccinated are more likely to catch the plague that those who are not. I think that the own goal is table 2 of reference 3 - not atoned for by tables 3 and 4 which show that your chances of getting seriously ill or dying are much reduced. We are told that the Anti-Vax crew have been feasting.

I go on to read that the problem is caused by the unsatisfactory state of the population denominators used to calculate these rates. But I do not get to read chapter and verse, despite a bit of poking about. We might be able to spend billions on a failed track & trace system - but we don't seem to be able to find a bit of statistical manpower - say a few man weeks at £500 a day - to publish a proper account. 

Nor does anyone offer the defence that for the Security Agency to withhold or modify a regularly published statistical table on the grounds that the figures were unsatisfactory would have made them a target for the same Anti-Vax crew: 'government cooking the books again'.

But someone does say that it would have been much better if the Security Agency had got it right in the first place: the damage has been done now and it will take a while to claw back the lost ground.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-spat-about-some-dirty-coal.html.

Reference 2: UK statistics tsar rebukes Health Security Agency over flawed jabs data David Norgrove says health body ‘slipped up’ publishing report cited by vaccine sceptics - Oliver Barnes, John Burn-Murdoch, FT - 2021.

Reference 3a: COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report: Week 42 - UK Health Security Agency - 2021.

Reference 3b: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1027511/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-42.pdf.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/gross-flows.html. Part of my previous exposure to difficult denominators.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/secret-squirrel.html. Another shiny new and fancily named outfit. Don't hear much about it now.