In statistics, the lower case of the Greek letter, sigma, is used in order to signify the standard deviation of a variable — a measure of how much spread there is around its average value.
In manufacturing, engineers use something called a Control Chart to make sure that a process — such as casting the bolts or rivets which hold a bridge together — is calibrated, and the output of the process (the bolts or rivets) aren’t too far from specifications.
If bolts aren’t made to specification, the bridge eventually collapses (and people may die).
Here is an example of a “three-sigma violation” in a Control Chart:
The Upper Control Limit (UCL) sits three standard deviations above the mean. In a typical process, about 99.7% of observations fall within three standard deviations of the mean. Only 3 in every thousand observations swing outside these limits.
Less than 2 in every thousand would exceed the UCL by inherent variation.
Because the ‘large-nation standard deviation of yearly death’ is less than 2%, it means that — any time upon which you witness a 6% change in yearly death — then you’ve witnessed more than three standard deviations of change.
A change in death of 12% is equivalent to more than six standard deviations of change. Even if you started at the Lower Control Limit (LCL) — three full standard deviations below the mean — it is impossible to have more than 12% increase without witnessing a “three-sigma violation.”
But both Hong Kong and Thailand suffered through that much of an increase in death:
When 2021 and 2022 are added together, Singapore also had an increase in death which was over 6 standard deviations.
Because populations don’t change in size by very much from one year to the next, a one-year change in death counts is proportional to a one-year change in death rates. If death counts rise by 10% in a given year, then, for that year, the death rate rose by about 10% also.
Evidence (very strongly) suggests that, some time after the year of 2020 had passed us by, “something” began to kill off people in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand. Only Slovenia and Sweden saw death changes which are not out of the bounds of plausibility.
NYC had a 200-sigma event