Putting aside the important distinction between correlation vs causation for a moment, the apparent association between the two data sets provided more than a little comedic relief. At face value, it appeared the parts of Britain that voted to leave the EU matched exactly with the areas affected by the 1992 outbreak of Mad Cow Disease and at first, it was enough to get people pretty excited – even some prominent journalists and economists were taken in by the convenient (and, in hindsight, suspiciously perfect) parallel: