"...Two generations of over-protecting our children, seeking safe places, announcing “trigger warnings,” hyperventilating on social media, and having radio and TV starving for things to fill continuous 24/7 cycles have all built up to a crescendo of noise...
When the Imperial College of London reported in mid-March that its model predicted the COVID-19 virus could kill as many as 2.2 million Americans and more than 500,000 Britons if governments did nothing to control the spread of the virus, it became the benchmark for radical policies that were unbelievably destructive to society.
What might have been a more dangerous but manageable pandemic (which would be the fourth since 1975) suddenly became the species threatening, Spanish Flu-Black Death-end-of-times threat that required the most radical, draconian public health restrictions and economically suicidal behavior in modern history.
Consider the human cost of the last three pandemics. These are the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s figures:
But, the extraordinary influence of supposedly expert modelers is the second great scandal. We should also have congressional hearings into their destructive impact. In some cases, modelers completely misinformed government leaders, the news media and ultimately the public about the scale of the threat.
The most influential model was the one created by the Imperial College in London, which estimated more than 500,000 Britons would die and more than 2.2 million Americans would die if governments did nothing. The model projected that in both countries the hospitals, intensive care units and ventilators would be overwhelmed.
Faced with a projection that five times as many Americans could die this year as were killed in all of World War II, President Trump had no choice but to close the country...
Unfortunately, too few people examined the assumptions behind the Imperial College model. First, it assumed an infection rate of over 80 percent of the population of the United States. By comparison, the deadliest pandemic in modern history was the Spanish Flu (also H1N1) of 1918-1919. It only infected 28 percent of the U.S. population...
projections that were disconnected from common sense and reality...
It turns out the chief author, Neil Ferguson, has become famous for making wildly absurd predictions...
“Ferguson has been wrong so often that some of his fellow modelers call him ‘The Master of Disaster...’
The whole role of hyping supposedly scientific, dire modeling predictions on issues like climate change is a key to understanding the bad policies left-wing scientists are trying to browbeat us into endorsing...
There is a rule in computing: Garbage in, garbage out. If you enter the wrong assumptions, you will get the wrong answers. The idea that using a computer suddenly makes some projection scientific or valid is ridiculous. Garbage data leads to garbage answers. (In fact, Ferguson’s COVID-19 model used 13-year-old code that was written for influenza – not a coronavirus...)
Congress should investigate the entire modeling-advising process just as it should investigate the Chinese Communist dictatorship’s role in spreading the virus in the first place...."
NEWT for the WIN
When the Imperial College of London reported in mid-March that its model predicted the COVID-19 virus could kill as many as 2.2 million Americans and more than 500,000 Britons if governments did nothing to control the spread of the virus, it became the benchmark for radical policies that were unbelievably destructive to society.
What might have been a more dangerous but manageable pandemic (which would be the fourth since 1975) suddenly became the species threatening, Spanish Flu-Black Death-end-of-times threat that required the most radical, draconian public health restrictions and economically suicidal behavior in modern history.
Consider the human cost of the last three pandemics. These are the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s figures:
- 1957-1958 – the Asian Flu (H2N2) led to 116,000 American dead and 1.1 million dead worldwide.
- 1968 – during the Avian or Hong Kong Flu (H3N2) about 100,000 Americans died and about 1 million people died worldwide. (In the same year, there were 16,899 “incidents or deaths” in the Vietnam War.)
- 2009 – The H1N1 Flu killed an estimated 12,469 Americans and worldwide the estimate of the number OF dead ranged from 151,000 to 575,000...
But, the extraordinary influence of supposedly expert modelers is the second great scandal. We should also have congressional hearings into their destructive impact. In some cases, modelers completely misinformed government leaders, the news media and ultimately the public about the scale of the threat.
The most influential model was the one created by the Imperial College in London, which estimated more than 500,000 Britons would die and more than 2.2 million Americans would die if governments did nothing. The model projected that in both countries the hospitals, intensive care units and ventilators would be overwhelmed.
Faced with a projection that five times as many Americans could die this year as were killed in all of World War II, President Trump had no choice but to close the country...
Unfortunately, too few people examined the assumptions behind the Imperial College model. First, it assumed an infection rate of over 80 percent of the population of the United States. By comparison, the deadliest pandemic in modern history was the Spanish Flu (also H1N1) of 1918-1919. It only infected 28 percent of the U.S. population...
projections that were disconnected from common sense and reality...
It turns out the chief author, Neil Ferguson, has become famous for making wildly absurd predictions...
“Ferguson has been wrong so often that some of his fellow modelers call him ‘The Master of Disaster...’
The whole role of hyping supposedly scientific, dire modeling predictions on issues like climate change is a key to understanding the bad policies left-wing scientists are trying to browbeat us into endorsing...
There is a rule in computing: Garbage in, garbage out. If you enter the wrong assumptions, you will get the wrong answers. The idea that using a computer suddenly makes some projection scientific or valid is ridiculous. Garbage data leads to garbage answers. (In fact, Ferguson’s COVID-19 model used 13-year-old code that was written for influenza – not a coronavirus...)
Congress should investigate the entire modeling-advising process just as it should investigate the Chinese Communist dictatorship’s role in spreading the virus in the first place...."
NEWT for the WIN
