JOHANNEBSURG - ON THURSDAY, Mamelodi Sundowns beat Kaizer Chiefs 1-0. Sundowns was chasing the log with Chiefs on a three point lead.
The win was a stamp of authority that now Sundowns has caught up with Chiefs. The league has suddenly become interesting. On the Covid-19 standings, South Africa may have been unhappy to have risen to number five and may get some cold comfort that Peru has overtaken it.
South Africa has 618 000 cases against the US’s 6 million infections. Compared to South Africa, the US has 10 times the number of infections but its population is five times higher. This means at face that the US infection rate is twice that of South Africa. But as President Donald Trump has correctly pointed out, the US’ testing rate is higher than any country’s.
This is where the Covid-19 tables are very misleading. Even though South Africa is sixth in terms of volume of infection, it was first per 1 000 when the daily rate approached 13 000. This gave South Africa one infection in every 4 400 people. The US was second with one in every 5 500 while India had one infection per 230 people. A per capita table not adjusted for the number of days since the first infection is misleading and that is why the table misleads on infection rates. However, the numbers are still very interesting and their contestation can be politically intertwined when Trump enters the fray and argues for less testing.
He would have had a valid point if he advocated for a random sample area based testing and for each country’s results to be raised to the population. Currently, the hype around these numbers is unwarranted because these have serious defects and biases for cross national comparisons. The numbers may make a lot more sense per country across time, but they are altogether nonsensical as a league table. The number of deaths said to be from Covid-19 can be compared and may represent an unbiased league table. However, that is on condition that all deaths are recorded . South Africa has 13 400 deaths which would be a mortality of 23 people per 100 000, compared with 61.4 per 100 000 in the US.
And as the deaths plummet to 240 a day in South Africa and 160 in the US, the first position on the Covid-19 league table remains a Chiefs-Sundowns PSL league title glory chase. The jury is still out on who will win the race. But what is certain is South Africa is experiencing a sharp and encouraging decline in Covid19 mortalities and this should provide important lessons for diversity in counsel and unity in command.
But the personal protective equipment scandal may very well be the large fly in the ointment and scupper the encouraging progress.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the former statisticiangeneral of South Africa and former head of Statistics South Africa.
BUSINESS REPORT