Boks' Math; Vets

.

Boks has set out Clifton Merritt’s statistical analysis of shelter killing in the US. Merritt is an anti-disciple of No-Kill who has argued that all definitions are worthless.

However, Merritt guesstimated animals killed in various shelter systems and gave estimates of feral cat populations and killing trends.

He also listed the specific outcomes of well over a hundred shelter systems, including LA.

However, Boks juggled the numbers Merritt provided and inserted fiscal year 2006-07 instead of 2006.

LAAS killed 19,216 cats/dogs in 2006, but Boks listed 17,314 which Boks said Merritt wrote. He put in Fiscal Year instead of the regular year.

Boks said LA averaged 4.3 animals killed per 1,000 residents according to Merritt, but in fact, Merritt reported 19,216/4,000,000, which is 4.8.

Not like these numbers mean anything.

Boks also offers his analysis:

(The basic question LA City critics keep asking is, "Why can't Los Angeles be like San Francisco?" The answer is that Los Angeles is exactly like San Francisco, if you compare like-to-like demographic units. For example, …if you compare San Francisco and San Mateo County to Los Angeles, the combined S.F./San Mateo number and the current Los Angeles County number per 1,000 humans would be just about identical.)

Well, using similar logic,why don’t we compare Los Angles City/County and San Bernadino and Kern County, with San Francisco, Mateo and Sonoma Counties? It is very interesting to note that the Boks supplied figures have exact numbers listed for LA City, LA County and San Francisco, the S.F. Bay area—whatever that is—has an estimate number of 50,000. I don’t know whether Ed through this number in or it was a Merritt estimate.


Merritt's numbers also show that for the Northeast U.S., whatever that means to him, the kill rates per 1,000 population was 1.7, or about 1/3 of LA City


AS IF THESE NUMBERS MEAN ANYTHING. THEY DON’T. IT IS ABSOLUTELY STUPID TO MEASURE PROGRESS TOWARDS NOKILL ON THE BASIS OF NUMBERS OF ANIMALS KILLED PER THOUSAND. If that were the measure, NYC would have been no-kill years ago.



On a more interesting note, LAAS now has four vets working and one close to hire. It is an international mix of nationalities and religions.



One American Jew, my former vet Steve Feldman; one Fillipino; one Chinese and one Indian. Maybe the Chinese is Taoist and the Indian Hindu or Buddhist.