Watching scientists, politicians and journalists struggle to compare national death rates from the coronavirus pandemic, I had an acute case of dj vu. Though the virus may be novel, the confusion generated by inconsistent data standards is anything but. Its something Ive observed closely for many years in studying public sector debt.
Such league table comparisons in both cases are simply not reliable. The pandemic has shown that public health data and economic data share the same flaws and challenges regarding basic accounting issues. Chief among these is how different countries measure data and how to harmonise data that comes from lots of different sources.
Take harmonisation. The UK is widely reported to have the highest number of co…
Read the full article at: https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-deaths-and-swelling-public-sector-debt-share-a-data-quality-problem-141492
