Sunday, May 17, 2020

So it is like Global Warming:

In other words, we have changed our way of life and spent a whole shitload of money (and in this case, damaged our economy) for a bunch of predictions that just aren't panning out, and probably never will.

Yes, I am talking about Mr. Mann's "Hockey Stick" predictions for our worldwide temperature...based on a computer program that no one can fully follow because it is crap programming done in a crappy way then inputted crap data....which resulted in crap for predictions.

And we (the western world and other countries as well), did it again. We listened to another doomsayer who pointed to his computer program and people listened without investigating....
I'm talking about he computer models that were used to do the predictions for Covid-19...those were also crap programs with crappy programming done in a crappy way that were fed crappy data and therefore gave us crappy predictions....

The models, as we all know, were terribly off. They overestimated the number of deaths by a factor of more than 60. Yep, they estimated (here is the US) more than 6 MILLION deaths due to Covid-19 by now. We have had less than (as of 5/17/2020) 90 thousand. Pretty  big difference, Huge error factor.

Ferguson and Imperial College’s refusal of all requests to examine taxpayer-funded code that supported one of the most significant peacetime decisions in British history is entirely contrary to the principles of open science—especially in the Internet age. The Web has created an unprecedented scientific commons, a marketplace of ideas in which Ferguson’s arguments sound only a little better than “the dog ate my homework.” Worst of all, however, Ferguson and Imperial College, through both their work and their haughtiness about it, have put the public at risk. Epidemiological modelling is a valuable tool for public health, and Covid-19 underscores the value of such models in decision-making. But the Imperial College model implementation lends credence to the worst fears of modelling skeptics—namely, that many models are no better than high-stakes gambles played on computers. This isn’t true: well-executed models can contribute to the objective, data-driven decision-making that we should expect from our leaders in a crisis. But leaders need to learn how to vet models and data.

One has to wonder if Ferguson, who has been caught not following the basic rules he suggested to prevent person to person contact (especially not being able to stay away from his mistress) has invested in the fall of the world's economy ....perhaps in futures markets or other financial vehicles because of his protective measures implemented because of his faulty predictions based on his crappy programming...that he knew was greatly overestimating the impact of Covid-19.

We do know that his behavior is shady since the lockdowns began in response to his predictions.

I smell something.   

2 comments:

Aaron said...

Yep, the computer program and the resulting nonsensical worst-case scenario model that came out of it appear to be red hot garbage.

The Imperial College model has always proclaimed doom, been wrong every time, and instead of being discredited, this time people panicked and believed it rather than being rationale.

Peteforester said...

Never mind the fact that hospitals have been receiving bailout money for treating Kung Flu patients, thereby inducing the hospital administrators to lean on the docs to somehow claim tie-ins between the likes of patients dying of emphysema and heart failure and Kung Flu. Talk about books that cook themselves!