Data Talks

 But sometimes people have a hard time listening.

Economic decline – or growth in the case of Taiwan – over the first 3 quarters of 2020.

As before there does not appear to be a trade-off between wealth and health.

Countries that protected their population's health are largely the same countries that protected their economy. https://t.co/HcIuAXyVDY

— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) November 10, 2020

This isn't an issue of data so much as a non sequitur.

We still know dreadfully little about key aspects of Covid-19, particularly about why some countries are stricken and why some seem unaffected.  At the beginning everyone feared for Africa and yet they seem to have been hardly touched (so far).  We don't understand why.

Max Roser is indulging in sotto voce rhetorical advocacy rather than in empiricism and data analytics.

Few would argue that African countries were in a position to protect their population's health.  As it turns out, for reasons unknown, they have not had to.

Roser's implied argument seems to assume

All countries are equally vulnerable to Covid-19 and for known reasons

Proper public health policies (such as masks, social-distancing, and lockdowns) are known and equally effective across diverse nations and cultures

Highly variant economies are similarly susceptible to the consequences of Covid-19 

Each of these assumptions is demonstrably untrue.  

Roser would be on somewhat plausible ground if he at least did a correlation of health outcomes and economic outcomes.  He has the data.  While correlation is not causation, at least it establishes that there is some sort of relationship between variable regardless of what the nature of that relationship might be (for example, independent of one another but similarly related to a third variable).

The fact that he does not do the correlation is likely because from other research I have seen, the correlation is quite weak and when looked at in context, ambiguous.

The sloppiness of his logic is reflected in his words as well, granted that he is writing in a second language.  The issue is not whether there is a trade-off between wealth and health.  Wealth is essentially an historical measure.

The argument Roser wants to makes is that there is a causal relationship between policies to protect public health and policies to sustain national economic activity as measured by productivity and if done correctly, those health policies will not impede economic productivity.

What he is actually showing is that those nations which have been hardest hit by Covid-19 as measured by infection rates, etc., also suffer the greatest economic harm.  It is unclear whether Covid-19 is causing the economic harm or the policies to address Covid-19.  It is unclear whether those countries which have not yet been exposed will be able to maintain their productivity when it does take hold.  

It is perfectly tenable that some countries have, for reasons of climate or historical epidemiology exposures, have natural barriers to infection.  Of course their economies will be less disrupted, not because they protected the populations health but because for other reasons.  

We simply don't know.