“Are Left and Right Experiencing Two Different Pandemics?”
Tom Woods Show, episode 1648
May 8, 2020
https://youtu.be/VALE-ogLcqg
34:51

“Jeff Deist, chairman of the Mises Institute, joins me to try to get to the bottom of why the response to COVID-19 (and the lockdowns) seems for the most part to divide along ideological lines, an outcome I myself did not expect.”
Tom Woods

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry8zmPB3cgc

Many science models should not predict data but should explain the data. Only once they have managed to successfully predict, during testing, a lot of future data can predictive models be used for prediction of future data (e.g. weather, spacecraft trajectories, stock market values, crop yields, etc.). Sue Denim showed that Ferguson’s model was bogus all along.

More than just science should be based on the data from the field. Decisions are better when they are based upon existing data rather than models. Even by March there was a lot of existing data that demonstrated the actual behavior of the virus and disease, such as the elderly being more vulnerable, the young being almost completely safe, and those with existing morbidities being most vulnerable. Thus, rather than protecting those most vulnerable, schools were closed, and soon everyone, not just the vulnerable, were locked down, and the police patrolled the streets heavily to intimidate those reluctant to obey. Many people complained at the time that the reactions were wrong, but the complaints fell on ears that listened to the modelers, not the data from the field.

A risk, as with the climate models, is that those who relied upon the flu models became so married to the predictions that they modified the data, making the models look not quite so wrong. The data collected in the U.S. is so corrupted away from what the model sought, the number dying from Wuhan flu (not with the flu or suspected, or assumed, or assigned (for disaster relief revenue)), that it cannot be used to rectify the models that predicted doom and gloom.

Another risk was that the models initially did not consider simple measures that were already in effect, such as hand washing, which had become commonplace due to previous flus and illnesses. The earliest model did not consider hand washing or travel bans — or even the social distancing that was already in place at the time of lockdown — and predicted an unacceptable number of deaths, a number that was not going to happen by the time of the decision for economic shutdown. Decisions were made not based upon the situation at hand but based upon a non-existent situation. It was not until after the shutdown-lockdown decision was made and implemented that the truth emerged, that basic hand washing and travel bans removed 90% of the predicted deaths that the decision makers thought the shutdown-lockdown solution was supposed to prevent. The modelers waited until after the implementation to tell the decision makers that the models predicted not that 2 million lives would be saved, but that the loses were predicted to be reduced to 60,000, under conditions of shutdown, from the 100,000 under conditions of light social distancing. The modelers predicted forty thousand lives would be saved in America by a three-week shutdown, as announced by Fauci.

Another risk is that the intent of the models was not to predict other consequences, intended or not. Thus, the models did not predict economic losses (personal, business, or governmental); collateral deaths; societal changes or breakdowns, temporary or permanent; worldwide food supply-chain breakdowns and associated starvation; the inability to restart the economy in a timely manner due to fears that any further deaths would result in political, economic, or legal consequences; political and dictatorial overreach in all branches and levels of government; mission creep (moved goalposts) and the associated devastation; or civil disobedience. Recommendations and decisions were made in panic without proper consideration of the consequences. The problem was the panic, not the disease, and the panic has yet to be addressed — or modeled. The panicked reaction is turning out to be far more deadly and devastating than the disease.

Even in the absence of political agendas, models have limitations. As with climate models those limitations were not addressed (or understood?) by the modelers for the Wuhan flu. Science also has limitations, which is why many, most, or all decisions should not be based solely on the science, either.

jose sauceda: I have deleted the obscenity from your comment. You are new here, so I haven’t suspended you. However, read the rules just above the list of last ten comments in the right column. No obscenities allowed. Do it again and I will suspend you for a week. Do it a third time and it is bye-bye forever.

You are welcome to comment. I expect however commenters to act like adults. If you can’t go somewhere else.

That’s about 800 of 1150 inmates testing positive. Data from captive populations like this or the Diamond Princess are invaluable to analysts in determining IFR (Infection Fatality Rate). As with the Diamond Princess passengers and crew, the population of a prison will not necessarily be representative of the population as a whole, but if anonymized health records are provided to researchers to determine age and comorbidity vs. outcome, strong inferences can be gathered.

I still think we need a lot of informed-consent volunteer testing, and that existing restrictions need to be loosened, but for now we need to rely on “accidental” experiments found in the wild. My biggest concern is that waiting on accidental exposure for phase III efficacy testing of vaccines will take much longer than a program which allowed for intentional inoculation/infection of volunteers.

What I don’t know is if phase III time is the limiting factor. I know that, with the aid of government grants, companies are proceeding with “at risk” production of untested vaccines. But does that production take long enough to scale up that even if they knew they had a safe and effective vaccine today, it still wouldn’t be widely available until next year?

-The title is somewhat a misnomer, but he does provide suggestions therein. He does do a very good job of giving an historical perspective.

What if i had a small scratch on my finger and the doctor recommends amputating it; so i will not get infection and remain in good health; is the doctor a quack?

Andrew_W:
Could it be that Ferguson was preoccupied with his extensive extracurricular activities, with someone else’s wife?
(In the American Democrat Party, that is considered a resume-enhancer.)

(I’m reminded of a Poem….
“On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.” “)

Ref–“many Americans have been too preoccupied with fighting against those measures, unable to adhere due to financial or housing issues or just too indifferent.”

When did Americans start “fighting against those measures?”
When did Americans become “too indifferent?”
Obama cured the homeless problem, we didn’t hear about homeless people for 8 years.

But on a more serious note–
Q: Have you ever actually been to the United States?

We’re not going to obey you, Andrew_W, anymore.

These quack scientists should be sued personally by their victims. And then be given the Flynn treatment after the FBI gets purged by President Trump.

A nice comforting thought, and one of the narratives being pushed. However, the actual data does not support this.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/04/the-failed-experiment-of-social-distancing/

Actions were taken which altered the trajectory of the spread of the disease, so Ferguson was not wrong when his models are considered in the correct context. The dishonest claim is to imply that he projected 500,000 or 2.2 million deaths even with the actions that have been taken. Given that obvious difference, projections based on no action led to actions being taken lowering death rates and slower spread of the virus. So yes, the criticisms, which ignore the obvious actual sequence of events, are dishonest and politically motivated.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6

A succinct precis of the modern leftist mindset – “You don’t agree with my politics. Therefore I don’t have to take anything you say about anything seriously.”

The criticisms of the Imperial College/Ferguson code base are completely apolitical. Only the closing policy recommendations are political. Reject those if you insist, but, unless you are prepared to go full tilt boogie into the post-modernist everything-is-socially-constructed fever swamps and insist that computer science and software engineering are both just tools of white, Christian, capitalist, sexist, racist, imperialist oppression – and maybe you are – you need to deal with the substance of the technical criticisms.

Also: Given the pervasive no-enemies-on-the-left postulate of progressivism, it is close to impossible to imagine anyone of a political persuasion similar to Dr. Ferguson’s standard-issue academic leftism being willing to criticize his work so long as it advances The Narrative. That being the case, it is almost axiomatic that substantive criticism will only come from people not sharing Dr. Ferguson’s politics. On the left, “truth” is whatever The Narrative requires it to be. People who don’t believe in intellectual honesty are hardly likely to call anyone to account, especially one of their own, for the commission of mortal sins against that – now former, for the most part – academic ideal.

Yes, and no. The public panicked based on a poor understanding of the meaning of Pandemic to a large extent. The opponents of President Trump jumped on the chance to force him into mistakes, and knowing this, he had little choice but to overreact.

The similarities to the shortfalls of the climate models is scary. Seems pretty clear to me that the universities are scrambling for research dollars by any means possible.

I go back to the argument that scientists should not make policy. While policy makers should consider the information provided by scientists, it is policy makers who have a wider knowledge base and are better able for decision making by weighing ALL factors not readily available to scientists limited focus: And I say this as a scientist (retired)!