Questioning the data

The data are reported as they are presented; these reports not being vehicles for editorial comment. But there have been occasions when one has been tempted. There were two such examples last week. The first related to Wednesday’s report of 570 new positive cases in Majorca. On the same day there was a report for the daily figures for cases per municipality. This latter item bore no relation to the former. A tot-up gave a number way short of the 570.

The second example was the epidemiology service stating a total of 31,922 positive cases in the Balearics since the start of the pandemic and including reference to cases classified as having come from the rest of Spain and from abroad - respectively, 257 and 160. Are we to believe, by implication, that only 1.3% of all cases have been imported? Seemingly we are, yet this runs counter to arguments regarding mobility.

One suspects that there is nuance behind these numbers that went unexplained, and it is lack of explanation and consistency which raises the questions. With the municipality data, it may well have been that these were out of sync with the other report because of different data systems. In which case there needs to be clarity. Otherwise, it isn’t just myself who has reason to wonder.