Many moons ago, I wrote about How Not to Get Fooled by Graphs. Exactly why it’s necessary to drum in such a warning is once again demonstrated by the NZ Herald.
Purely unrelated, I’m sure, to the multi-million-dollar bribe “public interest journalism” cash injection from the government – not to mention the brazillions that the government is obviously spending on advertising – the Herald is batting hard for the Ardern Government’s vaccine rollout.
Now, in itself, there’s nothing obviously wrong with promoting a purely voluntary vaccine rollout, unless you’re a hardcore anti-vaxxer. The issue comes when the media are: 1) obviously covering up for an incompetent government, and 2) lying by misdirection.
As to the first, the cover-up and excuse-making are, I grant, subjective. But when the Herald is running puff-pieces about how lockdowns are affecting the PM’s wedding plans… pass me the barf-bag and don’t kid me that this isn’t the media running cover.
But it’s the second that’s most blatant – and the most hypocritical, coming from the Herald.
Take a gander at this big, splashy graph that dominates the Herald’s front page.
Now, at first glance, especially to those of us accustomed to fuel or battery-charge graphics which indicate how close something is to “full”, that looks pretty much like New Zealand is within an inch of reaching its 90% goal. Except it isn’t.
A more honest graph would be this:
Because that’s the only picture that matters. As the vaccine providers advise, the full benefit of the vaccines will only be felt from at least a week to two weeks after the second dose. More importantly, the second dose is usually staggered two to three weeks after the first.
So, the program is at least three weeks away from actually looking like this:
More importantly, its progress is almost certainly going to slow down dramatically.
The roughly 55% already vaccinated are the low-hanging fruit. These are the people who were either at most risk (i.e. the elderly) or just keen to be seen to be part of the “team of 5 million”. The vaccine-hesitant will probably show up in the next month.
But, after that, expect the program to stall: a small hard core of people will refuse the vaccines altogether. Surveys originally suggested that up to 25% would refuse. That margin has clearly already shrunk, but it doesn’t seem unlikely that the adamantly anti-vaccine will stall the creep to 90% for the foreseeable future.
On a final note: why have I deleted the reference to “X doses on this day”? Because they’re irrelevant: all they serve to do is puff up the narrative that the rollout is steamrolling on. Vaccine doses per day are going to vary greatly, depending on things from the day of the week to availability – and the government’s own data shows that the stocks of vaccines received are consistently behind expected or planned supply.
Granted, all this may seem like quibbling, but, remember that it was the Herald itself which pontificated that “a cavalier attitude towards information graphics is concerning”. They were right, of course: which makes their own misleading graphic doubly damning.
Let’s be clear here: the Herald didn’t actually lie. But, it presented truthful information in a very misleading way. As William Blake said, A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
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