Data and Statistics as basis for political decisions: lessons to be learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic

The Covid-19 crisis has impressively raised the general awareness that our social coexistence and political decisions are essentially based on data, the weighing of risks and thus on probability estimates. This places high demands on the ability of health authorities, policy makers and the media to communicate statistical information as well as on the ability of citizens to understand these messages. In this paper we reflect on the role of scientific evidence in democratic societies and analyze selected illustrative examples of communicating evidence via visualizations and simulation, media reports, and expert’s statements. We identify venues and formats of communicating statistical information about the pandemics to the public that seems to be effective contrasting less helpful formats. We conclude by presenting recommendations for stakeholders in politics, media and statistics agencies on how to communicate empirical evidence to the public efficiently, released by the Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Statistik, an umbrella organization of statistical associations in Germany.