Numbering the People

In my metaphysic, I describe how statistics are the numbers you select -- and deselect. That means that statistics can be right but completely wrong. In 2017, I reviewed the book Uncertainty, which cautioned that statistics require "slow, maturing thought", not mere formulae and data. One of the earliest problems with COVID-19 was that there wasn't an unbiased sample -- and an ongoing problem is deaths with vs. deaths from. Crucial un-thought-of statistics keep coming up:

• Yesterday on the BBC. In England and Wales, out of 8 000 excess deaths, two-thirds were not COVID-19-related.
• Five days ago on Fox News. In Massachusetts, they found that the infection rate on the street was 32% not 2%

I suspect that the best response to COVID-19 would have been quite different to what we see -- unless the correct response is the expected response. OBSERVATION: Perhaps this is why David was condemned for numbering the people in 2 Samuel 24:1. Perhaps this is why it is a particularly bad idea (I think) to count numbers in Church, or to use any kind of statistical reasoning in Church (involving people, money, demographics, and so on) where it is not absolutely necessary.