Although schools were shut down early this spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Rory Bergermann, who teaches physics and math at Martensville High School, kept busy educating people by sharing Saskatchewan’s COVID-19 data daily on his Facebook page, which is now read by many people across the province.
When asked what made him come up with the idea to start this project, he stated that when the pandemic forced closures for many functioning parts of Saskatchewan daily life, there was a lot of mathematical modelling being used to make projections for infections, hospitalizations, and projected deaths.
“All of these were based on reproductivity rate for viral transmission. I wanted to see for myself with published data if we were experiencing exponential growth of new infections. This is what I teach my math and science students to do – collect data, graph the data, then analyze and make interpretations of the data,” said Bergermann. As he was sharing his results on Facebook, it became clear that there was a problem with the mathematical modelling being used early on by official sources for predictions. When his Facebook friends requested that he make his posts shareable, it took off from there.
One of the things Bergermann wants people to take away from his posts is that, first, it is possible to live with this virus rather than hide from it. “We have been living with COVID-19 for six months now and even though we are opening up our economy, our churches, and our schools again, we have never overrun our health care system. COVID-19 is a real virus with potentially deadly outcomes for a few people, but most of us may or may not get sick like always.” He also stated that our immune system will protect us and be strengthened as a result of exposure.
“Secondly, I am hoping that people realize that using mathematical modelling to make future projections is not a crystal ball. It is an estimate at best – regardless of what it is that we are attempting to predict with modelling.”
He noted that the original projections back in March were forecasting a minimum of 3000 deaths if we locked everything down and 8000 deaths if we did not lock down. After six months we have 24 deaths. “I don’t mean to trivialize these deaths, but our mathematical modelling projections were completely wrong.”
Bergermann said that the feedback from his facebook page has been great and that many Saskatchewan residents do not analyze data, and therefore when they see and hear headlines, it can cause quite a bit of fear and / or anxiety about what the numbers mean to them.
“By taking the daily data and graphing, analyzing, and interpreting the meaning for everyday people in a context that they can relate to, it helps them to realize that there is no need for fear and panic.”
His hope is that anyone who reads his daily posts can see that the COVID-19 virus is here and it is not going to go away; however, it is not anywhere near as deadly as the initial mathematical modelling projections predicted it would be. As a result, we are slowly opening up our province and monitoring the effects of each incremental step.
In his daily posts he also reminds people the importance of regular handwashing, staying home as much as possible, staying at least a “one hockey stick” distance from others, and wearing a mask in public.
“So far it has gone extremely well. I always end my daily post with what I truly hope people will get from my daily statistical analysis – Keep Calm and Carry On!”
