Unmasking the Truth
(skip to “The Thirteenth Question” below if you read prior questions already)
Having broached the topic of masks, I want to encourage dialogue between the polarities of the debate. This is challenging given the political climate of uncivil discord rather than civil discourse. With a vision of communities coming together to collectively determine truth and decide on policy, I offer a series of questions. I don’t want to give answers, but questions that re-teach all of us to engage in discourse which will lead us to that vision. Somewhere between the polar extremes, we will find the truth that we all need.
Therefore, let’s unmask the truth whether it leads to “masks or no masks”, “mandates or no mandates”, and more.
The Thirteenth Question… Are there other stats to counter those?
Imagine yourself confronted by someone who expresses an opinion contrary to yours. It could be on social media, in line at the grocery store, in a town hall meeting, a family gathering, or anywhere. Your first impulse is to blast away. Throw your best at them. Pound them into submission. This happens from both sides of the debate.
If you stuck your hand down into a jar and pulled out a blue marble, would you conclude that the jar only had blue marbles? You could be confident in such a quick assessment only if that was the only marble in the jar. Otherwise you are stuck with a problem of sample size. Finding 1 blue marble in a jar of 100 marbles does not mean you can tell others that you have 100 blue marbles.
The same goes for statistics in just about any field. If we do a study of 10 patients taking a treatment, the improvement of 1 patient does not mean much. In fact, even if all 10 improve with the therapy, it could still just be chance that the 10 got better. Now, if we test 10,000 patients and 9,000 improve, while only 1,000 get well out of another 10,000 who did not get treated, that is a big deal. This is true if we repeat the first experiment with 10 patients 100 times and each time 9 improved.
My point is this… If you are debating over COVID or other medical issues and someone throws out a study to prove their point, after analyzing the study in question, your next question should be if they have more studies. Do they have more stats to support their point or just one study? Rarely if ever can a medical question be settled with one study.
Neither should you depend on one study for your case nor should you let someone else convince you with only one statistics.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
