OPINION:
Mark Twain, amongst others, popularised the famous quote 'there's lies, damned lies, and statistics'. Numbers have long created justification for many things – wars, economics, business change, and now pandemic targets.
As a marketer, I'm surrounded by numbers and a few handy acronyms – target audience size, business objectives, results, awareness, ROI, NPS, CSAT. I'm used to working out what's achievable, unrealistic, stretch, or easy peasy.
The current statistic in question, which requires significant interrogation, is 90 per cent. What is 90 per cent? It's not even 90 per cent of all Kiwis, it's of the 'eligible' population. It's also 90 per cent x 20 (DHBs). Apparently, this is a prime number that is not divisible. Unless it's by 3, but that's geographically fixed for greater Auckland only. It gets us to a red traffic light – not even a Go sign!
We have a veritable infographic of numbers floating around. There's 9, which is the number of months ago that Israel introduced their vaccine passport. There's 1, which is the number of countries that have vaccinated over 90 per cent of their eligible population (it's the United Arab Emirates before you ask). There's 100 million, which is how many covid vaccines were administered in the USA by March 19th. There's, depending on which report you read, between 1-3 per cent of hospitalisations due to Covid 19 of those who've been vaccinated, meaning over 96 per cent of NZ hospitalisations are unvaccinated. There's 3, which was the original suggested number of weeks between Pfizer doses. And then there's 6, another suggested number of weeks between doses. There's 80, which is how many days Auckland has been in lockdown, and 50, which is how many days there are until Christmas. And there's 27,500, about the number of cars rolling along State Highway 1 at the Bombay Hills every day – how's that going to work for police checking people are vaxed at Christmas time?