Road Apples
Aug. 31, 2009

Statistics, health care and zombies

By Tim Sanders

Amidst all the hubbub over nationalizing health care, tons of statistics have been generated. Unfortunately those statistics don’t tell us much, because, not surprisingly, the statistics offered by the supporters of nationalized health care support nationalized health care, while the statistics offered by opponents of nationalized health care oppose it.

Statistics are tricky, and it’s hard for the average American citizen to know which statistics to believe. A recent statistical study, for example, shows that 28% of the American public believes that Marl Twain first said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” That same study reveals that 13% attribute the quote to the 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, while 7% believe he borrowed it from some guy named Walter Bagehot, whom 3% are convinced took it in on consignment from Arthur James Balfour. The statistics in that study show that a statistically insignificant number were aware that Balfour found it wedged in the rafters of a barn owned by a gentleman named Squibb, who accepted the phrase in payment of a bribe owed him by a politician named Ned Labouchere, who found it in the wallet of somebody named Courtney, who claimed it came from Napoleon, who attributed it to Charlemagne, who was reported to have said he thought Julius Caesar said it right after he was stabbed either fourteen or fifteen times in the Forum, depending on whose statistics you believe. Interestingly enough, 46% of those polled in that study warned the pollster that if he didn’t quit bothering them, they’d help him find a new place to keep his pencil. So there you have it. Sometimes statistics mean nothing.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the health care debate. For awhile we were bombarded by statistics showing how much better Canada’s national health care system was than our semi-private system, based primarily on the percentage of the Canadian population served. Those statistics were countered by a different set of statistics which illustrated the huge difference between the percentage of Canucks being served and the percentage of Canucks only waiting to be served. This included statistics showing how many Canadians slipped out of those chilly northern waiting lines and hobbled southward to Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic for medical services. The nationalized health care proponents replied with a large pile of statistics showing America’s exorbitantly high medical costs as a proportion of the Gross Domestic Product due to unnecessary duplication of tests, and waste by private insurance corporations. The opponents rallied and tossed a powerful one-two combination using the specter of multi-godzillion dollar deficits followed up by the need for tort reform.

The American public admired all of these statistics and counter statistics, facts and counter facts, but became concerned when certain news organizations disclosed that Dr. Anne Doig, president of the Canadian Medical Association, had her own set of statistics. She recently said that the Canadian health care system was “sick” and “not sustainable.” National Health Care proponents ducked the Doig quote, and jabbed back with a poll conducted among nine private Canadian citizens which proved conclusively that they approved of their system by a vote of six to two, with one abstention. This, of course, caused national health care opponents to question what nine hand-picked hosers knew about health care anyway, and the other side countered with “OH YEAH, WELL THAT DR. DOIG WOMAN’S A HOSER, TOO,” and so it went. The average American brain cannot absorb all of these statistics without exploding, and several cases of brain explosions have already been reported across the country.

This brings us to the following story, which is absolutely true. It clearly illustrates that those “hosers” to our north know a bit more about preventive medicine than one might surmise just by looking at the dental records of their hockey players. According to a very meaningful August 18 article on the BBC website, Canadian researchers are hard at work keeping up with critical medical-related issues in their country.

The article, by BBC science correspondent (seriously) Pallab Ghosh, is titled (again, seriously) “Science ponders ‘zombie attack.’”

That’s right, our Canadian friends have spent considerable time and money determining that “If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilization unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.” The article explains that the results of extensive zombie-modeled studies are reported in a book by a University of Ottawa researcher, Professor Robert Smith?

The Ghosh article explains (and we’re still being dead serious, here): “Professor Robert Smith? (The question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake) and colleagues wrote: ‘We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies.’”

“In their study, researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University ... posed a question: If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?”

Here is my favorite line in that article:

“To give the living a fighting chance, the researchers chose ‘classic’ slow-moving zombies as our opponents rather than the nimble, intelligent creatures portrayed in some recent films.”

So we must assume that since the only way to kill a ‘classic’ slow-moving zombie is to cut off his head, if you are a ‘classic’ slow-moving Canadian infected with, for example, the swine flu virus, you’d be wise to keep it to yourself. And who could doubt the conclusions of a Canadian college professor whose surname ends with a question mark?

Statistics show that despite the “damned lies” quote, 39% of Americans are impressed by zombie statistics, while 36% find them annoying. The rest are convinced that Night of the Living Dead was a documentary film about the United States Senate patching together some last minute legislation.