What are the criticisms for this one?
I quickly scanned through it. The main argument seems to be that early models were based upon limited data and we’re not accurate. The models need to be constantly re-run with new up-to-date data and the new model runs should be evaluated because early models were not accurate. Is that about right?
Idk why anyone would disagree with that. But also, we can’t go back in time, so early models is all we had… early on.
Ya, that is pretty dumb, lol. I shared the article because I didn’t know there was a pandemic during Woodstock. I thought that was pretty funny for a couple reasons.
He’s blaming the public statements by the villain du jour of the right, not the model itself.
It’s worth noting that even at the time of its March 16th public release, the conditions of the ICL’s “do nothing” scenario were already violated, rendering its assumptions invalid. Most governments had already started to “do something” by that point, whether it involved public information campaigns about hygiene and social distancing or event cancellations and the early stages of the lockdown, which began in earnest a week earlier. Voluntary behavioral adaptations also preceded government policies by several weeks, with a measurable uptick in hand-washing traceable to at least February and a dramatic decline in restaurant reservations during the first two weeks of March.
Yes, that’s the whole fucking point. You have a model and then you take measures to mitigate the risk. And then the actual results differ from the, you know, do nothing worst case scenario.
A month later, it has become readily apparent that the 2.2 million death projection was off by several orders of magnitude,
This statement seems…a bit dated, don’t you think?
Just as I expected. The standard “because the measures worked 'ya idiot”.
How about the fact they listened to the same dude with the outlier Mad Cow projections?
How about looking at the facts presented and not ignoring everything stated due to the “bias” of the author? People have that, shockingly, a bias. Welcome to the human race.
Didn’t know that either. Man, it’s weird how possibly the worst festival ever for spectators ended up being the most famous and revered concert festival of all time.
Having a Woodstock event in the midst of a pandemic is dumb.
Living in a plastic bubble is dumb.
Where on that scale does the lockdown ad infinitum fall?
Well, yes. Again, that’s the whole point.
He’s attacking Ferguson’s media appearances, not the model.
Indeed, the ICL team played no small role in hyping the projections of its “do nothing” scenario, even as its own report downplayed the likelihood of that outcome in favor of more conservative projections associated with an array of social distancing policies and suspensions of public gatherings. On March 20th ICL lead author Neil Ferguson reported the 2.2 million death projection to the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof as the “worst case” scenario. When Kristof queried him further for a “best case” scenario, Ferguson answered “About 1.1 million deaths” – a projection based on a modest mitigation strategy.
Well, obviously, we avoided the “worst case” scenario because of the heroic, timely measures taken by our governments, duh.
Of course, I expect people to focus objectively on “most likely”, when the “worst case” is staring me in the face and making me crap in my tailored suit pants. Of course.
A staggered and/or a delayed lockdown is absolutely the worst possible strategy for dealing with a pandemic, the equivalent of cauterizing your wound with a hot iron.
But when you mess up tracking and testing you cannot do targeted lockdowns and there’s nothing else left but a general lockdown.
Putin has locked down Russia because he also messed up.
I’m confused. What point/s are you agreeing with regarding modeling?
Just an update.
I’m in a country town in the West of Australia which had only 2 cases that were dealt with immediately.
For the first 2 weeks work was quiet. But now I’m the busiest I have ever been as my competitors have been closed by their corporates, while I’ve remained operating as the business I am involved in is independent and we agreed to stay open.
I’m feeling a little guilty that I am profiting in times where people have lost their jobs.
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I didn’t fact check everything, but the claim that there were no drug overdose deaths, in 1969, is definitely wrong.
That’s very interesting. And hopefully his theory is accurate.
Have his thoughts and the patterns he is seeing been addressed or analyzed by other professionals in the field? My quick googling couldn’t find anything.
I see the standout losers as countries like Austria,
Austria started reopening their economy two weeks ago with less than two dozen new cases.
I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden. They didn’t practise too much lockdown and they got enough people sick to get some herd immunity.
Sweden’s economy is set to contract 7 to 9%, much like their locked down neighbors, only with 3k more deaths. So the outcome is the same, only you’ve got a bunch of older people dead.
One of the more insidious ways this discussion was framed was the pro- vs. anti-lockdown as left vs. right. That’s dumb. No one is pro-lockdown. It’s like accusing someone of being “pro-amputation” once gangrene sets in (yes, it’s an 18th century medical analogy).
No one is pro-lockdown, the fact that countries were compelled to lock down means that they fucked up early because they relied on procrastination and wishful thinking.
I think this is another foul-up on the part of the baby boomers. I am a real baby boomer — I was born in 1947, I am almost 73 years old — but I think we’ve really screwed up. We’ve caused pollution, we’ve allowed the world’s population to increase threefold in my lifetime, we’ve caused the problems of global warming and now we’ve left your generation with a real mess in order to save a relatively small number of very old people.
I’ve seen this interview shared many times on social media, and I’m convinced most of the conservatives skipped over this part.
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Because pollution, population, global warming are not real messes.
They got people sick?
How does he know they have any herd immunity? Is there even such a thing as “some” herd immunity? I mean, it’s a herd that either has immunity or it doesn’t. Maybe some among the herd have immunity but that is the opposite of herd immunity, it’s individual immunity.
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A lot really can get done with these two things.
I’ll explain how later.
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