lying with statistics: US all cause deaths edition
lying with statistics: US all cause deaths edition crossing out cross correlations and getting to the meat of the matter el gato malo it has recently come into vogue to try to use US state scale data to prove that covid vaccines have all cause mortality benefit. much of this appears misleading and there looks to be a lot of confusion about what some of this data means and how to read it, so it seemed like a good time for another edition of “stats with cats” to see if we can’t get to the bottom of it. let’s look: this argument, an example of which is made here by associate econ professor micah pollak, rests on correlations from data. it’s precisely the kind of argument that looks very compelling at first blush but is, in fact, complete fallacy. (in fact, several fallacies) can you spot the errors? Micah Pollak @MicahPollak Excess deaths per capita (from all causes since June 2021) are LOWER among U.S. states which have administered more #COVID19 vaccines doses per person on average. Ju...