The models are bullshit based on bad data - no "math" can hide that fact

L

Legion

Oderint dum metuant
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IF YOU LOST YOUR JOB OR LOST MONEY IN THE MARKET BECAUSE OF THE PANIC, THIS IS THE MAN TO BLAME​




Here we are. Three weeks (at least, depending upon where you are) into what amounts to house arrest.

Stores are told what products they can and cannot sell.

A father has been handcuffed and arrested for playing with his daughter in a deserted park.

People are being fined for walking on vacant beaches.

Businesses have been shuttered.

The economy has been trashed. Our concept of civil liberties and the permissible use of the state’s police power have been irrevocably moved in the direction of totalitarianism.

There is literally no end in sight.

So it is fair to ask how we got here.

In a word: models.

The Wuhan virus frenzy really began in earnest when Neil Ferguson published the results of a simulation he’d run on the public health impact of the virus.

In it he predicted that some 2 million Americans would die from the virus.

The impact of this paper can’t be overstated. The British and Dutch governments were stampeded from pursuing what amounted to a “ride it out” strategy (which, in my view, was the only strategy even vaguely related to either science or common sense) into throwing the emergency brake on economic activity.

Once one model was accepted, other proliferated.

Perhaps the most notable one has been that from the Institution for Health Metrics and Evaluation. This one, like the non-factual Imperial College model, has produced Doomsday results that led to panicked governors believing they had to ‘do something’ by shutting down most economic activity.

These models have one unifying feature.

They were all wildly and spectacularly implausible and are all being proven wildly and spectacularly wrong on a daily basis.



They are also all being promoted by a DEMOCRAT-run website (https://covidactnow.org/) that bombards state, county and local governments with scary "data" on a daily basis to prolong the panic for political purposes.




https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/04/09/815099/
 
Thomas Bossert, who was once point man for pandemics on the National Security Council, predicted a month ago that we were only 10 days away from our hospitals being overwhelmed.

So, over the next 2 weeks, we could see another 12,000-14,000 deaths for NY State alone (about half of those from NYC). I think it will be lower. I hope it will be. Even so, I don’t know how a healthcare system even the size of NY’s can cope. ��

— Thomas P. Bossert (@TomBossert) April 2, 2020

He was relying upon data from one of these models for that bit of stupidity, but, alternatively, maybe he’s just not very bright.
 
Legion said:
http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.upp-prod-us.s3.amazonaws.com%2F7a87ed70-6aad-11ea-a6ac-9122541af204


IF YOU LOST YOUR JOB OR LOST MONEY IN THE MARKET BECAUSE OF THE PANIC, THIS IS THE MAN TO BLAME​




Here we are. Three weeks (at least, depending upon where you are) into what amounts to house arrest.

Stores are told what products they can and cannot sell.

A father has been handcuffed and arrested for playing with his daughter in a deserted park.

People are being fined for walking on vacant beaches.

Businesses have been shuttered.

The economy has been trashed. Our concept of civil liberties and the permissible use of the state’s police power have been irrevocably moved in the direction of totalitarianism.

There is literally no end in sight.

So it is fair to ask how we got here.

In a word: models.

The Wuhan virus frenzy really began in earnest when Neil Ferguson published the results of a simulation he’d run on the public health impact of the virus.

In it he predicted that some 2 million Americans would die from the virus.

The impact of this paper can’t be overstated. The British and Dutch governments were stampeded from pursuing what amounted to a “ride it out” strategy (which, in my view, was the only strategy even vaguely related to either science or common sense) into throwing the emergency brake on economic activity.

Once one model was accepted, other proliferated.

Perhaps the most notable one has been that from the Institution for Health Metrics and Evaluation. This one, like the non-factual Imperial College model, has produced Doomsday results that led to panicked governors believing they had to ‘do something’ by shutting down most economic activity.

These models have one unifying feature.

They were all wildly and spectacularly implausible and are all being proven wildly and spectacularly wrong on a daily basis.



They are also all being promoted by a DEMOCRAT-run website (https://covidactnow.org/) that bombards state, county and local governments with scary "data" on a daily basis to prolong the panic for political purposes.




https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/04/09/815099/
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Legion, I ways get a big laugh out of reading your post; you do keep this forum laughing.
 
Now that the models are being proven to be nonsense, an industry is springing up to defend them.

One of the better ones is this from The Atlantic, Don’t Believe the COVID-19 Models; That’s not what they’re for.

"The most important function of epidemiological models is as a simulation, a way to see our potential futures ahead of time, and how that interacts with the choices we make today. With COVID-19 models, we have one simple, urgent goal: to ignore all the optimistic branches and that thick trunk in the middle representing the most likely outcomes. Instead, we need to focus on the branches representing the worst outcomes, and prune them with all our might. Social isolation reduces transmission, and slows the spread of the disease. In doing so, it chops off branches that represent some of the worst futures. Contact tracing catches people before they infect others, pruning more branches that represent unchecked catastrophes.

At the beginning of a pandemic, we have the disadvantage of higher uncertainty, but the advantage of being early: The costs of our actions are lower because the disease is less widespread. As we prune the tree of the terrible, unthinkable branches, we are not just choosing a path; we are shaping the underlying parameters themselves, because the parameters themselves are not fixed. If our hospitals are not overrun, we will have fewer deaths and thus a lower fatality rate. That’s why we shouldn’t get bogged down in litigating a model’s numbers. Instead we should focus on the parameters we can change, and change them."

It is a great example of kernels of truth being used to justify bullshit projections that have devastated family finances without demonstrably proving that they saved a single life.
 
Strumpet said:
Legion, you don't suppose that you're that confirmed troll, that you're referring to.
Click to expand...

No, I don't.

Now, back to the subject:

No one has an objection to a bunch of geeks running computer simulations as an exercise in onanism.

But that is not what happened here. These models were given a high profile by left-leaning academicians and massive coverage by the Trump-hating press.

They were clearly represented as predictions what would happen.

The other tack being taken is to say that the models are only wrong because we actually did things that the models recommended and avoided a worst case.

This is from Philip Bump at the ultra-liberal Washington Post:

A notable shift downward in projected deaths from coronavirus is already being spun as "experts were wrong!!" instead of "hey, the thing experts said would drive down deaths might be driving down deaths."https://t.co/HpUPAyc5tx pic.twitter.com/XLPD39dQfF

— Philip Bump (@pbump) April 9, 2020

The problem with this is that it is a lie.

The worst case scenarios were clearly predicated upon us doing exactly what we’ve done.
 
Trumpet said:
Legion, I ways get a big laugh out of reading your post; you do keep this forum laughing.
Click to expand...

CMIP5 are even more hopelessly inaccurate but the loony tunes in the Democratic Party would commit countless trillions to spending based on them. I sincerely hope that this will be the final nail in the truly crazy GND.
 
The model on which the government is relying is simply unreliable.

It is not that social distancing has changed the equation; it is that the equation’s fundamental assumptions are so dead wrong, they cannot remain reasonably stable for just 72 hours.

And mind you, when we observe that the government is relying on the models, we mean reliance for the purpose of making policy, including the policy of completely closing down American businesses and attempting to confine people to their homes because, it is said, no lesser measures will do.

That seems worth stressing in light of this morning’s announcement that unemployment claims spiked another 6.6 million (now well over 16 million in just the past couple of weeks), to say nothing of the fact that, while the nation reels, the Senate has now chosen to go on recess, having failed, thanks to DEMOCRAT obstinacy, to enact legislation to give more relief to our fast-shrinking small-business sector.

The revised April 5 model was grossly wrong even in predicting conditions that would obtain on April 5 itself.

It had predicted that on that day, New York, the epicenter of the crisis, would need about 24,000 hospital beds, including 6,000 ICU beds. In fact, the model was off by a third — New York had 16,479 hospitalized COVID patients, 4,376 that were in ICU.

On April 8, IHME reduced the total number of hospital beds it had predicted would be needed nationally by a remarkable 166,890 — down to 95,202 from the 262,092 it had predicted less than a week earlier (i.e., it was nearly two-thirds off).

The ICU projection over that same week was cut in half: to 19,816 on April 8, down from 39,727 on April 2.

The projected need for ventilators also fell by nearly half, to 16,845 from 31,782.

Because of the way the media report on skepticism about models and a desire to get reliable facts (which used to be the media’s job), I pause to stress that I am not belittling the threat of the virus, particularly to people who are especially vulnerable — the elderly and those with underlying health problems, especially respiratory problems.

The question is one of balance.

American lives are being shattered by the restrictions that have been put in place.

The decision to do that was based on models.

Those models have no credibility.

They now tell us that about 61,000 may die of coronavirus this year — although, if the last few days are any indication, that number could be revised downward soon, perhaps substantially.

To compare, the CDC estimates that 61,200 people died from the flu in the 2017–2018 period.

It has become fashionable to ridicule flu comparisons, but they are surely relevant, even if it is true that coronavirus is more readily transmissible and has a higher fatality rate.

For this year, the CDC projects that flu deaths will range between 24,000 and 63,000, and that hospitalizations could surge as high as 730,000 (out of the 18 to 26 million people who are treated for flu, out of as many as 55 million Americans who experience flu-related illnesses).

We don’t shut the country down for that.
 
Havana Moon said:
CMIP5 are even more hopelessly inaccurate but the loony tunes in the Democratic Party would commit countless trillions to spending based on them. I sincerely hope that this will be the final nail in the truly crazy GND.
Click to expand...

Strumpet doesn't know what CMIP5 or GND even are, Tom.
 
Havana Moon said:
CMIP5 are even more hopelessly inaccurate but the loony tunes in the Democratic Party would commit countless trillions to spending based on them. I sincerely hope that this will be the final nail in the truly crazy GND.
Click to expand...

Shouldn't you worry about what happens in your own country????????????????????
 
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