From the “all models are wrong, some are completely useless” department. This was originally from May 6th, but it’s so bad, we deserve a reminder just as we are about to emerge from the final phases of lockdown here in California.
From the National Review:
‘Professor Lockdown’ Modeler Resigns in Disgrace
Neil Ferguson is the British academic who created the infamous Imperial College model that warned Boris Johnson that, without an immediate lockdown, the coronavirus would cause 500,000 deaths and swamp the National Health Service.
Johnson’s government promptly abandoned its Sweden-like “social distancing” approach, and Ferguson’s model also influenced the U.S. to make lockdown moves with its shocking prediction of over two million Americans dead.
Johan Giesecke, the former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has called Ferguson’s model “the most influential scientific paper” in memory. He also says it was, sadly, “one of the most wrong.”
Full story here
I wonder how long it will take for people to realize that some climate models like RCP8.5 and the upcoming “hotter” IPCC models will be equally useless and damaging?
Another in a very long list of completely, utterly amoral climate doom prophets. Modelling his personal behaviour after Arnold, and his professional misconduct after Mann.
Are we the only ones who can see the naked emperor wannabes?
No, I don’t think so, that’s why after decades the public still isn’t buying the climate change nonsense. But the public has not yet realized the enormous evil they are trying to accomplish.
The numbers produced by Fergerson’s model were intended as a worse case scenario, i.e. what would happen if people and governments did nothing. And they still seem reasonable. In the UK there have been 40 000 deaths and the latest studies suggest that only 10% of the population have antibodies to the virus. Thus a very rough estimate would suggest that by the time all of the population had been exposed the number of deaths would be 400000 or roughly what the original model suggested. In the USA the death rate for the virus is still over 5% and again extroplating that to the entire population would result in over 2 million deaths.
Of course one would expect that the worse case scenario would never come true since the moment significant numbers of people started dying then people’s behaviour would change as would government policy. Simply by making such predictions public Fergerson’s team ensured that they would not come true. But governments need to plan for prevent the worse case scenario and that is what they have done.
“The numbers produced by Fergerson’s model were intended as a worse case scenario, i.e. what would happen if people and governments did nothing. And they still seem reasonable.”
Yes, Fergerson’s numbers were a worst-case scenario guess of 500,000 unmitigated deaths in the UK.
The latest so-called most accurate virus computer model, with the benefit that the modelers have to do a lot less guessing because they have actual data about the Wuhan Virus to input, projects 370,000 unmitigated deaths.
So it seems to me, and I don’t know Fergerson from Adam, and have no dog in his fight, that Fergerson came pretty close using just a best guess.
On top of that, whether Boris Johnson had been presented with the 500,000 figure from the most terrrible model in human history (Imperial College), or was presented with the 370,000 figure from the virus model held most highly, the results would have been the same, a social distancing lockdown.
There are about two or three dozen virus computer models. How far off the mark are all those models initial projections as compared to Imperial College? I haven’t seen them, but I would bet most of the models look pretty similar with similar figures.
Anyway, I think trashing the Imperial College model only serves the purpose of those who want to trash the whole concept of social distancing as a means to handle an infectious, dangerous virus.
Saying the Imperial College Model had a problem therefore all models are trash is not helpful. We should think about what we are going to do the next time a virus shows up, and I don’t think trashing models is the way to proceed. We need to find a way to make accurate models for the future. Thinking models are useless won’t get us there.
And btw, the models have not been proven useless or even inaccurate. Trump was highlighting the 100,000 to 140,000 range of mitigated deaths projection and the actual deaths have exceeded 100,000 now, and the projection for 370,000 unmitigated deaths in the UK has not been shown to be wrong nor has the 2.2 million figure Trump uses for the U.S.
Once we nail down all the attributes of the Wuhan virus, then we will be able to know what the unmitigated deaths might have been. I’ll be interested to see that number, to see how far off the model numbers were, if any.
Unscientific trashing of the Virus Computer Models is what is going on here, viewed through the filter of the state of the economy, which causes some to reach erroneous conclusions because that’s the conclusion they want to see. Confirmation bias.
I’ve been a trasher of the Human-caused Climate Change computer models for as long as they have existed, so I find myself in an ackward position (going against the grain on WUWT) but I think the arguments against all the virus computer models because the Imperial College model had a problem are very weak. No conclusions can be made about these models yet, but some people are making their conclusions anyway. I say that’s unscientific.
I would like to see a situation where we can count of the virus computer models to put us in the ballpark. The arguments here are that they don’t, but where’s your evidence that they don’t? You don’t have any evidence because it’s too early to reach conclusions.
TA,
FWIW, my analysis is similar to yours.
Many people are jumping to conclusions that are invalid until more time yields better data.
Geoff S
“No conclusions can be made about these models yet, but some people are making their conclusions anyway. I say that’s unscientific.”
Hear, hear! Seems to be too much ideologically motivated ranting going on here.
One good thing about the virus computer models as opposed to the Human-caused Climate Change computer models is that we will have actual data for the virus computer models which we can then compare to reality.
We don’t have that kind of data for the climate computer models. Instead, we have lots of guesses and the climate computer models don’t have any comparison with reality, other than maybe the least extreme of them all. The Russian model seems to be making better guesses and tracks reality closer than the other climate computer models. But the Alarmists cannot accept the Russian model as valid, ottherwise, it destroys their CO2 scaremongering.
Gee, Izaak, Sweden lost to date 4,652 of a population of 10.1 million (0.046%) with probably 75% of the population exposed to it in a do-little experiment. The US has lost 108, 000 which is 0.033%. They may lose proportionately more than Sweden next year. Most of the deaths are to retired, unwell people, and next year, this will be even more starkly in this age range. I’m in my 80s so I’m empathetic about this fact.
Sweden’s figures and a number of others in Eastern Europe show the infamous model to be ridiculously unrealistic. You are not a modeller, and what you suggest with your simple calculation is that is how this so-called professor of mathematical biology did his calculation.
While rescuing Ferguson, who doesn’t rescue himself in his no-excuse apology and resignation from his job, you reveal a troubling lack of standards for such modelling work on a pandemic that at least ultimately the very few bits of data needed can be acquired. Imagine how easily with such lack of standards you accept climate modelling where what is being modelled is many orders of magnitude more complex and confounded with factors unknown in kind and magnitude of effect.
Now I could have cut Ferguson some slack if his full 20 years of practice hadn’t been a 100% multi-orders of magnitude wrong in the direction of alarm concerning other flu ‘epidemics’ bird and swine. By speaking out on Ferguson’s behalf you reveal that the very same failures of climate models (300% too high in the warming prognoses) over the past 40 yrs are just fine. They didn’t even tune these down after failure, they simply moved the 1950 goalpost they were measuring from, back a hundred years to bankroll the 0.6C of natural warming into human caused warming to ‘correct’ the data. The 1.5C of warming they came out with in 2015, is simply an extrapolation of the natural warming of 0.6C to 1950 out to 2100. So far, doing absolutely nothing about emissions, it seems that we are unlikely to exceed 1.5C by 2100 with business as usual. This is why there is such a hurry to enact legislation. Another decade, the jig would be up.
Gary,
I would like to know where you get the figure that 75% of Sweden’s population has been exposed.
The best estimates that I have seen puts the figure much lower at less than 7% based on antibody tests. So again the models worse case scenario looks plausible. Nobody expects these numbers to
be realised since people will act to reduce the transmission rates by social distancing.
COVID-19 is a new disease which means that people do not have a natural immunity. A death rate of 1% is not unreasonable nor that 80% or so of the population get infected before herd immunity sets in. Which implies that a million deaths in the USA is a plausible number.
“COVID-19 is a new disease which means that people do not have a natural immunity. ” Sorry wrong it looks like this new disease has about 30% on the population already immune to it, even worse it looks like only about 20% get it under ordinary circumstance or even on a cruise ship. As documented it also looks like herd immunity is between 15 to 25%. The unknowns are still huge, the known now is that it might be a little worse .3 for COVID as oppose to .1 to .2 with the flu we get traversing the human population ever year.
Hi Mark,
Firstly I hope you are right. The fewer deaths the better. However when dealing with pandemics governments don’t have the luxury of waiting until all of the relevant numbers are known but instead have to act early in order to prevent the worse predictions from coming true. And by and large the governments response looks reasonable given what was known at the time. One would hope in retrospect that it was overblown since that would mean that fewer people die.
Thankfully there was a smart leader in the WH who attempted to address the issue earlier than his progressive critics thought he should:
“’Although travel restrictions may intuitively seem like the right thing to do, this is not something that WHO usually recommends,’ said Tarik Jašarević, a WHO spokesperson. ‘This is because of the social disruption they cause and the intensive use of resources required,’ he added.”
https://tinyurl.com/ulrjqs7
It’s a shame when progressive government leaders similarly act early to assist the worst predictions in coming true:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nearly-26-000-nursing-home-residents-died-of-covid-19-federal-tally-shows-11591053033
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/06/04/covid-19-wisconsin-nursing-homes-1-4-report-least-one-case/3146881001/
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-health-watch/michigan-nursing-homes-linked-1-4-coronavirus-deaths-tally-will-grow
etc.
“…Of course one would expect that the worse case scenario would never come true since the moment significant numbers of people started dying then people’s behaviour would change as would government policy…”
So your defense of the model is…that it is fatally flawed in the first place? Government policy would not have to be implemented for peoples’ behavior to change.
The original results were only made available for the US and UK. However, Sweden’s policy implementation (or lack thereof) has since been run using the Imperial College methodolgy. The results? 96,000 deaths predicted by the end of June (40,000 by early May), with a best case of just under 30,000 deaths by the end of June if it had implemented policies similar to the rest of Europe beginning April 10. In actuality, we’re into June, and Sweden is at 4,562 deaths as of yesterday.
Fail.
Here’s a useful model, as described by Micheal Fumento back in April:
https://nsjonline.com/article/2020/04/fumento-its-time-to-permanently-dump-epidemic-models/
“The only “model” with any success is actually quite accomplished and appeared in 1840, when a “computer” was an abacus. It’s called Farr’s Law, and is actually more of an observation that epidemics grow fastest at first and then slow to a peak, then decline in a more-or-less symmetrical pattern. As you might guess from the date, it precedes public health services and doesn’t require lockdowns or really any interventions at all. Rather, the disease grabs the low-hanging fruit (with COVID-19 that’s the elderly with co-morbid conditions) and finds it progressively harder to get more fruit.”
Link is broken
I don’t know what happened tothat link, it worker earlier today. Regardless, the article is here:
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/18/after-repeated-failures-its-time-to-permanently-dump-epidemic-models/
I suspect the incompetence inherent in Ferguson’s methodology is probably also inherent in many of the medical predictions of deaths due to a variety of perceived causes. NOx, 2.5m particulates, smoking, diesel fumes, various life styles etc. you name it. Obviously there are risks; but extrapolating those risks by dubious statistical means is very dangerous, often leading to foolish policy decisions.
The prediction that human CO2 emissions will lead to mass extinction perhaps takes the biscuit; but I do not assign that nonsense to the medical profession.
“But governments need to plan for prevent the worse case scenario and that is what they have done.”
Governments do NOT need to plan for the worst case scenario. That’s ruination. They should plan for the most likely range of scenarios, and address that equitably.
Not squander their resources planning for the worst case.
It is not so much that Ferguson was way wrong. He has been way wrong several times before. Hoof and mouth, BSE, 2009 swine flu. Modeling what you know you do not know does that.
It is more that his poorly documented Epidemiological 15000 line spaghetti code was so off from basic sound Software engineering practices that Imperial brought in Microsoft to clean it up, and rewrite everything in C++ before before finally releasing a version to others. They failed. Run on different machines, different results. Run on same machine twice, different results, as Edinborough found running the Microsoft ‘cleaned’ code. Beyond buggy. Junk from memory array bad housekeeping. Discussed at length by professional programmers elsewhere.
Testing the heavily-modified code may only be revealing bugs added by Microsoft programmers. The only way to evaluate the quality of the model that produced the original predictions is to test it directly, not some derivative code. It is inexcusable that every scrap of original code, change logs, all validation data and test results are not made available. The Trump administration or some Senate committee should be issuing subpoenas right now. If Imperial College had any concern for their reputation they would be doing likewise.
The real blame here is not on Neil Ferguson, but on the people in government that made multi-trillion dollar decisions enforced in law based on an unverified model, especially given the creator’s previous record. Gross misfeasance.
And of course the MSM did absolutely zero checking into Ferguson’s background before running headlines “millions will die”. But I have come to expect the MSM to be biased, incompetent and lazy and they seldom disappoint.
Alan Watt CDL7
You nailed it.
+500,000
Ferguson’s 500k figure was for an unmitigated spread.
His estimate for the current intervention measures was 12k to 48k. The UK is currently at 40K.
He predicted that critical bed usage would peak around April 10th. Spot on.
He used an IFR fro the UK of 0.9%. Recent estimates from serological studies suggest ~0.88%.
“Testing the heavily-modified code may only be revealing bugs added by Microsoft programmers”.
Are you telling me lock-me-up-Fergie was using WINDOZE?
I thought added bugs from Microsoft was part of the normal insect world.
In our part of the world, the insects breed like fury during the early spring,only to breed the real nasties to bite you in April-June.
I suspect Microsoft since as long ago as Numtpy Technology v 3.5 has the same bug gestation period as all the “fire bug” maniacs.
You wait ’til they release the Covid Service pack 3a, then the “critical patches and updates”…
Anyone else ever work with Ada? It would have prevented all that memory array nonsense by forcing good housekeeping with its insanely rigorous typing.
There is no such thing as a programming language which can prevent people from writing buggy code. The quest to make programming easy and reliable goes back to the birth of the art and many theories have been tried. COBOL, ALGOL, Pascal, C, Smalltalk, C++, Java and others were each supposed to make programming better and more reliable, yet programs still have bugs. ADA would have been no different.
P. J. Plaugher once made this comparison between Pascal and C:
Despite the restrictions, it is perfectly possible to write bad Pascal.
As others have noted, iterative floating point calculations require special care to maintain accuracy; it’s not enough to get the equations right. Competent programming is a skillset distinct from mathematics and competent numerical programming is even more specialized.
A thorough code audit would have raised red flags on the Imperial College model. The shocking thing is that politicians were willing to risk their national futures on a piece of computer code that apparently hadn’t be audited at all.
I think that if you’ve never been directly involved in software development (i.e. never earned your living writing or maintaining code), the concepts of code reviews, numerical computing, “clean” code, etc. are far too abstract to understand. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. Most people want their phone, tablet and laptop to work like the proverbial toaster: you turn it on and it helps you get on with your work or entertainment. If it doesn’t work, you find someone to fix it.
The problem occurs when decision makers in powerful positions take the output of these simulations as fact, when they should be demanding a thorough inspection of the various internal assumptions and inputs. Or at least a track-record of accurate predictions from the group producing their predictions.
“hey failed. Run on different machines, different results. Run on same machine twice, different results, as Edinborough found running the Microsoft ‘cleaned’ code.”
Good Lord! What a fiasco!
The economy was not “locked down.” It was murdered.
The Economy: Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Our government leaders were not forced to use any model as a basis for their decisions. They appropriately relied on the advice of their health/medical advisors, who, unfortunately, were almost all long-serving government bureaucrats. Time for a change. Maybe a rotation of a group of 5 of the truly best and brightest for overlapping (for continuity) 5-year terms, with a scheme for rotating new blood in.
“Our government leaders were not forced to use any model as a basis for their decisions.”
That’s right. And the Imperial College model was not the only one out there. The U.S. does its own virus computer models, and they also look at the two or three dozen other models that are created.
The focus by the critics on the Imperial College model is because they can show demonstrable problems with it, and thus use it to smear the whole enterprise. Their error is in equating the Imperial College model errors with all other virus computer models, who did not have such errors in their software.
And now, it’s reported, that Imperial College is to remove the motto from it’s so-called Crest because it is supposed to be too imperialist. Sheesh! https://order-order.com/2020/06/05/exclusive-imperial-college-drops-imperial-motto-rooted-in-power-oppression/
I am surprised that Imperial College only removed the imperial from their motto.
Maybe they should complete the job by removing the word ‘Imperial’ from the name of the college.
Governments typically work on the precautionary principle, e.g., better safe than sorry. Still, everyone should have vetted the model results before using it as the basis of public health policy. The media and the medical community should be held accountable for this happening. Yes, Birx and Faucci are complicit, as were the FDA and the CDC, too.
It’s not surprising the left-wing governors and mayors kept their jurisdictions on lockdown for so long. They saw and opportunity to trash the booming Trump economy and took it. The left would rather put millions out of work and on the edge of poverty than allow Trump to use the economy for his reelection platform.
It is surprising the non-democrat, non-leftist governors kept their states in lockdown for as long as they did, too. When the facts* changed, the lockdown policies should have changed as well.
* Model results are not facts. Models to not produce data. Models show possibilities. The results of the various epidemiological models depend heavily upon the presumptions of the modelers and the quality of the data used as inputs.
The Minnestupid governor, late in the game still use a model that assume a 2% fatality rate long after it was known not to be anywhere near that. It was about control and the inability to admit one’s mistakes, not science.
The UK government had chosen as policy over many years to dismantle and de-fund the country’s health system.
From that point it really didn’t matter what any computer modeller said or did, we were in a mess!
John Cooknell
You are having a laugh.
The British Government has been hosing money into the sacred cow NHS for years.
More and more managers building their own little empires.
Many of the egregious farces experienced in the last 5 months have been owned by NHS managers. Lions led by donkeys again.
Of course, HMG have added another layer of ineptitude icing and sprinkles to the cake.
Exercise Cygnus?
No spare surgical gowns in the Country?
An almost total dearth of everything from swabs to body bags?
Having to emergency airlift masks, gowns, gloves in from China and Turkey which then proved faulty and useless?
Yeah that underfunding and dismantling thing again, I suppose.
Garbage thinking in, garbage thinking out.
Still no Covidapocalypse here at the Lake of the Ozarks from the crowded Memorial Day outdoor parties that got so much news play two weeks ago.
Thursday, the Missouri Department of Health announced no reported Covid cases so far. People visit the lake from all over and a few neighboring states report a few cases that they linked to the bacchanals at Backwater Jack’s and other venues.
Recently we’ve seen that combating largely imaginary systemic racism is more important then combating the SARS-2-Cov-2 virus. Incidentally, the protesters are not observing social distancing but the rioters are wearing masks.
May I remind people of another model that tried to change the world? “Limits to Growth” by Forrester, Meadows et al. I had the good fortune to be on a small team that was asked by what was known as the Rothschild Think Tank to look at some of the claims of that work in my first job. I learned the DYNAMO language in which it was programmed, and looked at their code in detail. We designed our own model (which I translated from concept to four card trays of FORTRAN and data – plenty of C cards included, run on what was Europe’s largest hunk of IBM mainframe at the time) which produced some rather underwhelming levels of alarm. We did not approach our work with prejudice. But when we had completed it, I came across critiques of LtG from Prof Wilfred Beckermann (one of the more memorable of which was that if we had used LtG approaches to modelling in the 19th century, we would have forecast that London would be under 6ft of horse manure – which of course is where we find ourselves today, metaphorically at least).
Ever since I have been highly skeptical of models in whatever sphere that are not well founded either for data or for mechanism, and worse – both.
I do not blame Ferguson, as inept as he might be. The actual problem was with the politicians who came up with a train wreck solution to a potentially serious threat. They did not make an effort to do some technical stuff like measure the extent of the virus spread then proceeded to locked down the economy with their heads buried in the sand. They then vilified treatments for the virus to compound their errors.
Quarantine the sick, protect the vulnerable and focus on the best curative treatments. Even today the best treatment has a stigma of “anecdotal” after fraudulently being smeared in major medical publications. Fortunately summer is upon us and the virus does not seem to do well with sunshine and warmth, kind of like a typical flu season. The politicians can now congratulate themselves with another job well done and move on to the next crisis of their own making.
Hold on. Donald has told us over and over that he saved millions of lives worth his decisive actions
Do you mean to say he’s wrong about that? If so, why would he repeat it over and over?
On the contrary Joshua.
Neil Ferguson said Donald has “saved millions of lives worth [sic] his decisive actions”
On the contrary, sycomouting. Donald has said over and over that he saved millions of lives. Google it.
First, Joshua, the way intellectual discourse works among grown-ups is you prove your own argument. That means *YOU* offer evidence in support of your assertions, and then I offer evidence in support of mine. Demanding that your opponent go out and find evidence for your assertions means you fail. That’s Debate 101.
But I forgive you. Perhaps you studied climate science at University, and therefore your [lack of] education has failed to prepare you for the real world. I’m going to try to show you how we do it in the grown-ups world. I’m even going to start by using what I assume would be one of your own “fav” sources for information, CNN.
Premise #1:
Donald Trump has suggested that 2M people would’ve died had he not done nothing to address the C-19 crisis (emphasis added):
“‘In every way the best economy in the history of the world. We were blowing away China. We were blowing away everybody. We were the envy of the world and then they came in and they explained it, and they said, sir, you have to turn it off. We have to close the country. And I said, say it again. They said, sir, you have to close the country. Nobody ever heard of a thing like this but they were right because if I didn’t we would have lost two million, two and a half million, maybe more than that people, and we’ll be at 100,000, 110,000, higher — the lower level of what was projected if we did the shutdown, but still you’re talking about — I say two Yankee stadiums of people.'”
https://tinyurl.com/ybc45hc3
Premise #2:
Neil Ferguson’s model predicted that if nothing were done to address C-19, 2M Americans would die.
https://tinyurl.com/yb6rua84
Ergo, Neil Ferguson “said” Donald Trump has saved millions of lives.
Trump: “and we’ll be at 100,000, 110,000, higher — the lower level of what was projected”
The lower level of what was projected, Nick. Not 60,000. Not 42,000.
Thanks for that CNN link, sycomputing.
https://tinyurl.com/ybc45hc3
I think that subject matter will enter the discussion sometime in the near future. It needs a little debunking. The CNN take on Trump’s projections, I mean. 🙂
Tom:
If DJT happened to comment on how poo stinks, CNN, et al., would publish 50 stories for 2 weeks on how he’s wrong.
“I wonder how long it will take for people to realize that some climate models like RCP8.5 and the upcoming “hotter” IPCC models will be equally useless and damaging?”
Um, before the sun goes out? Before the CO2-reducers bring on the next Ice Age?
Well. . . whatever. Anybody who composes a model of a future calamity is going to add a safety factor of at least two. Better to err on the side of caution, right? so I’m inclined to cut Ferguson some slack.
The greater scandal is the donkey-like refusal of the media to admit that COVID-19 is much more deadly in the aged than in the young. Here in Canada, our federal government pandemic update page just refused to publish the ages of the dead. Our national public broadcaster, the CBC, didn’t publish the median age of the COVID dead (which is 84) until the eighth week of the pandemic. I really think that if, before the lockdowns were instituted, the authorities had said that there was a new strain of pneumonia on the way, and that half of the fatalities would be in persons 84 or older, the lockdowns would have been far less severe.
The current tolerance of the authorities of the mass protests of police brutality call into question whether or not those authorities really believe the lockdowns are still necessary.
Actually, the real insanity is the fact that western governments did what has never been done before. They isolated entire healthy populations and shut down economic activity in their countries, rather than just simply isolating and treating infected people.
This has been one of the greatest blunders by western nations. And it all happened based on false information from the China-centric World Health Organisation and from so-called experts who got it so wrong.
This guy has been wrong so many times its quite funny! And people still listen to him.
Prof. Lockdown broke his own lockdown rules. He allowed his married lover to visit him for some rumpy pumpy where she thinks both her husband and her lockdown lover are all of one family in one family home.
When the dust settles, serious studies must be done with all the parameters entering the epidemiology study of a rapidly spreading infection, the health authorities of each country should settle on a way to face it in the future, assuming COVID 19 was a test. We were lucky the infection was not more virulent than the flu. Next time one with a death rate closer to the medieval plague could spring up, which left some areas with 50% dead, not just the old and infirm.
In most countries the real choice was not between number of deaths and the economy, although in the news it sounds like that. It was between the saving of the health care system , and its demolition as was clearly seen in what happened in Lombardy. I think those videos of dead in the hospital corridors and trucks carrying coffins influenced the government decisions more than any models .
Nobody has answered the question: “can an economy survive if the health care system is demolished”?
In retrospect each country need only do lockdowns in specific regions and facilities, which they still do in Greece, even now when general lockdown has been lifted . Certainly the damage to the economy would have been less. Hind site is useful only for planning for future reactions.
Good comment, anna.
Poor modeling isn’t the problem, failed public instruction that fails to provide their graduates with basic understanding of science and the ability to think for themselves is the fundamental flaw. After decades of climate models being proven wrong the virus models should have been met with skepticism.
As of the 2020-06-05 data from the CDC for weeks 1 to 16 in 2020 all states are listed as complete although more updates to the data will happen. I’ll re-run this again when they update the states that are not at 100% yet.
For 2020 the USA has an “excess death” rate about 6.6% (60,607) higher than the previous 4 year average for weeks 1 to 16. As a comparison I checked the first 16 weeks of 2018 compared to the previous 4 year average and it was 7.2% (63,260).
The script and all related files are here if you want to kick the tires:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fh9x5fngmfbeiiu/AAAH-OtOMqiY_R9qqG6YccCRa?dl=0
Recently Yoram Lass (formerly director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Health) gave an interview and said “total deaths” was the only way to look at it.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/22/nothing-can-justify-this-destruction-of-peoples-lives/
“Mortality due to coronavirus is a fake number. Most people are not dying from coronavirus. Those recording deaths simply change the label.”
“The only real number is the total number of deaths – all causes of death, not just coronavirus.”
PS. I’ve also done up the first run of weeks 1 to 21 and it is on the dropbox as well but it is missing a combined 8 weeks of data (Conneticut(3), North Carolina (4), West Virginia (1))
“all models are wrong, some models completely destroy economy and lead to poverty”