ZenMaster
09-08-2020, 02:42 PM
*Thread title meant to say "Covid panic caused by math error"..
I realize not many people care about corona any longer and have accepted living in an authoritarian state. The premise of this article is stupid as hell, that the panic was caused by a simple error, but try and read through the numbers and consider it the next time you call someone an idiot "for not believing in science"..
They added that influenza has a CFR of approximately 0.1 percent. One person in a thousand who gets it badly, dies.
But that quoted CFR for influenza was ten times too low – they meant to say the IFR, the Infection Fatality Rate, for influenza was 0.1 percent. This was their fatal – quite literally – mistake.
The mistake was compounded. On March 11, the same experts testified to Congress, stating that Covid’s CFR was likely to be about one percent, so one person dying from a hundred who fell seriously ill. Which, as time has passed, has proved to be pretty accurate.
At this meeting, they compared the likely impact of Covid to flu. But they used the wrong CFR for influenza, the one stated in the previous NEJM editorial. 0.1 percent, or one in a thousand. The one that was ten times too low.
Flu toll 1,000 – Covid toll 10,000
So, they matched up the one percent CFR of Covid with the incorrect 0.1 percent CFR of flu. Suddenly, Covid was going to be ten times as deadly.
Lockdown supporters are using psychology pseudoscience to label anti-maskers as irrational, stupid sociopathsREAD MORE: Lockdown supporters are using psychology pseudoscience to label anti-maskers as irrational, stupid sociopaths
If influenza killed 50, Covid was going to kill 500. If influenza killed a million, Covid was going to get 10 million. No wonder Congress, then the world, panicked. Because they were told Covid was going to be ten times worse than influenza. They could see three million deaths in the US alone, and 70 million around the world.
I don’t expect you or I to get this sort of thing right. But I bloody well expect the experts to do so. They didn’t. They got their IFR and CFR mixed up and multiplied the likely impact of Covid by a factor of ten.
Here’s what the paper, “Public health lessons learned from biases in coronavirus mortality overestimation”,says: “On March 11, 2020,... based on the data available at the time, Congress was informed that the estimated mortality rate for the coronavirus was ten-times higher than for seasonal influenza, which helped launch a campaign of social distancing, organizational and business lockdowns, and shelter-in-place orders.”
On February 28 it was estimated that Covid was going to have about the same impact as a bad influenza season – almost certainly correct. Eleven days later, the same group of experts predicted that the mortality rate was going to be ten times as high. This was horribly, catastrophically, running-into-Mars-at-5,000-miles-an-hour wrong.
Enter the Mad Modellers of Lockdown
In the UK, the group I call the Mad Modellers of lockdown, the Imperial College experts, created the same panic. On March 16, they used an estimated IFR of 0.9 percent to predict that, without lockdown, Covid would kill around 500,000 in the UK.
Is this prediction anywhere close?
So far, the UK has had around 40,000 Covid deaths. Significantly less than 0.1 percent, but not that far off. Of course, people will say... “We had lockdown... without it so many more would have died. Most people have not been infected…” etc.
To answer this, we need to know the true IFR. Is it a 0.1 percent, or one percent? If it is one percent, we have more than 400,000 deaths to go. If it is 0.1 percent, this epidemic has run its course. For this year, at least.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500000-covid19-math-mistake-panic/
I realize not many people care about corona any longer and have accepted living in an authoritarian state. The premise of this article is stupid as hell, that the panic was caused by a simple error, but try and read through the numbers and consider it the next time you call someone an idiot "for not believing in science"..
They added that influenza has a CFR of approximately 0.1 percent. One person in a thousand who gets it badly, dies.
But that quoted CFR for influenza was ten times too low – they meant to say the IFR, the Infection Fatality Rate, for influenza was 0.1 percent. This was their fatal – quite literally – mistake.
The mistake was compounded. On March 11, the same experts testified to Congress, stating that Covid’s CFR was likely to be about one percent, so one person dying from a hundred who fell seriously ill. Which, as time has passed, has proved to be pretty accurate.
At this meeting, they compared the likely impact of Covid to flu. But they used the wrong CFR for influenza, the one stated in the previous NEJM editorial. 0.1 percent, or one in a thousand. The one that was ten times too low.
Flu toll 1,000 – Covid toll 10,000
So, they matched up the one percent CFR of Covid with the incorrect 0.1 percent CFR of flu. Suddenly, Covid was going to be ten times as deadly.
Lockdown supporters are using psychology pseudoscience to label anti-maskers as irrational, stupid sociopathsREAD MORE: Lockdown supporters are using psychology pseudoscience to label anti-maskers as irrational, stupid sociopaths
If influenza killed 50, Covid was going to kill 500. If influenza killed a million, Covid was going to get 10 million. No wonder Congress, then the world, panicked. Because they were told Covid was going to be ten times worse than influenza. They could see three million deaths in the US alone, and 70 million around the world.
I don’t expect you or I to get this sort of thing right. But I bloody well expect the experts to do so. They didn’t. They got their IFR and CFR mixed up and multiplied the likely impact of Covid by a factor of ten.
Here’s what the paper, “Public health lessons learned from biases in coronavirus mortality overestimation”,says: “On March 11, 2020,... based on the data available at the time, Congress was informed that the estimated mortality rate for the coronavirus was ten-times higher than for seasonal influenza, which helped launch a campaign of social distancing, organizational and business lockdowns, and shelter-in-place orders.”
On February 28 it was estimated that Covid was going to have about the same impact as a bad influenza season – almost certainly correct. Eleven days later, the same group of experts predicted that the mortality rate was going to be ten times as high. This was horribly, catastrophically, running-into-Mars-at-5,000-miles-an-hour wrong.
Enter the Mad Modellers of Lockdown
In the UK, the group I call the Mad Modellers of lockdown, the Imperial College experts, created the same panic. On March 16, they used an estimated IFR of 0.9 percent to predict that, without lockdown, Covid would kill around 500,000 in the UK.
Is this prediction anywhere close?
So far, the UK has had around 40,000 Covid deaths. Significantly less than 0.1 percent, but not that far off. Of course, people will say... “We had lockdown... without it so many more would have died. Most people have not been infected…” etc.
To answer this, we need to know the true IFR. Is it a 0.1 percent, or one percent? If it is one percent, we have more than 400,000 deaths to go. If it is 0.1 percent, this epidemic has run its course. For this year, at least.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500000-covid19-math-mistake-panic/