Last week, on June 15, it was reported that 93 people in Germany died with or from Covid-19.

Five months earlier, on January 19, 1734 deaths were registered with or from Covid.

Is the June 15th announcement good news?

Depends on.

You can say no, because behind every single death there is an individual fate that cannot be added up.

Ten dead is no “better” than five dead.

Rainer Hank

Freelance writer in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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    But one can say that Germany is in a much better position in June relative to January.

    For comparison, one could look at the numbers of corona deaths in other countries and relate them to 100,000 inhabitants in each case in order to then decide whether Germany got through the crisis relatively well or moderately relative to other countries.

    "Pretty good," the result would be - at least in terms of the death toll.

    After all, one could ask how many people “survived” during this period because there were fewer traffic and influenza deaths in the Corona era.

    The "excess mortality" can be calculated from this.

    The crux with the average

    I can't remember ever being as fixated on numbers as I was last year. Corona has not only made us a nation of eighty million virologists, but also a country with millions of incompetent statisticians I hope the German Mathematicians Association (DMV) has recognized the opportunity for their subject: Anyone who wants to make themselves or their children clear that we learn for life in school should be remembered from the past year. It became clear which acceleration effect exponential developments have. And that we would do well to take statistics seriously. “It's easy to lie with statistics. It's even easier to lie without statistics, ”says statistician Frederick Mosteller.

    Math isn't exactly my forte. Fortunately, I don't have to hide that: Even good mathematicians say they are not good at math. To better understand the corona pandemic, one should know what numbers say and what they don't. Numbers say little without context. You create contexts by relating numbers to other numbers. If one is lucky, it becomes knowledge. The context is one thing. The average is the other. My horror at the news that the corona pandemic had led to a weight gain of 5.5 kilos in all of us turned into proud satisfaction after a check on the scales. Could someone else have become eleven pounds heavier in my place?

    I noticed how tricky numbers are when reading the recently published book by statistics experts Tom and David Chivers, which has the beautiful title: "How to Read Numbers". The book is enjoyable to read, does not require any mathematical prerequisites, just a clear head and in the end brings many aha experiences.