Chinese disease flashback

[Diogenes]

The DEMOCRAT-run website that promoted pandemic panic​

https://covidactnow.org/

Look who is behind their doomsday "tools": CoVidActNow was founded by Max Henderson, Rep Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, Igor Kofman, and Zack Rosen. https://covidactnow.org/about


Look who "endorsed and validated" their apocalyptic scenarios: https://covidactnow.org/endorsements


Look where they got their scary-looking data: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/26/uk-epidemiologist-radically-lowers-his-predicted-c/ https://www.dailywire.com/news/epid...admits-he-was-wrong-drastically-revises-model https://www.wsj.com/articles/should-we-wait-until-easter-11585239104 https://www.livescience.com/half-the-uk-infected-coronavirus-covid19.html


They made this stunning admission: Public leaders & health officials: The only thing that matters right now is the speed of your response. This model is intended to help make fast decisions, not predict the future.

 

[Hawkeye10]

As we see claims accompanied with alleged video from China of hospitals overloaded with flu or flu like sick people it is important to remember that the videos we were shown of massive numbers of people falling over dead of COVID in the streets of WUHAN were fake.

 

[Diogenes]

The COVID models were bullshit based on bad data - no "math" can hide that fact​

Stores were told what products they could and could not sell.

A father was handcuffed and arrested for playing with his daughter in a deserted park.

People were fined for walking on vacant beaches.

Businesses were shuttered.

The economy was trashed. Our concept of civil liberties and the permissible use of the state’s police power were irrevocably moved in the direction of totalitarianism.

There was literally no end in sight, seemingly.

So it is fair to ask how we got there.

In a word: models.

The Wuhan virus frenzy really began in earnest when Neil Ferguson published the results of a simulation he’d run on the public health impact of the virus.

In it, he predicted that some 2 million Americans would die from the virus.

The impact of this paper can’t be overstated. The British and Dutch governments were stampeded from pursuing what amounted to a “ride it out” strategy (which, in my view, was the only strategy even vaguely related to either science or common sense) into throwing the emergency brake on economic activity.

Once one model was accepted, others proliferated.

Perhaps the most notable one was that from the Institution for Health Metrics and Evaluation. This one, like the non-factual Imperial College model, produced Doomsday results that led to panicked governors believing they had to ‘do something’ by shutting down most economic activity.

These models had one unifying feature.

They were all wildly and spectacularly implausible and were proven wildly and spectacularly wrong.

They are also all promoted by a DEMOCRAT-run website (https://covidactnow.org/) that bombarded state, county and local governments with scary "data" on a daily basis to prolong the panic for political purposes.

https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/04/09/815099/

 

[Hawkeye10]

The COVID models were bullshit based on bad data - no "math" can hide that fact​

Stores were told what products they could and could not sell.

A father was handcuffed and arrested for playing with his daughter in a deserted park.

People were fined for walking on vacant beaches.

Businesses were shuttered.

The economy was trashed. Our concept of civil liberties and the permissible use of the state’s police power were irrevocably moved in the direction of totalitarianism.

There was literally no end in sight, seemingly.

So it is fair to ask how we got there.

In a word: models.

The Wuhan virus frenzy really began in earnest when Neil Ferguson published the results of a simulation he’d run on the public health impact of the virus.

In it, he predicted that some 2 million Americans would die from the virus.

The impact of this paper can’t be overstated. The British and Dutch governments were stampeded from pursuing what amounted to a “ride it out” strategy (which, in my view, was the only strategy even vaguely related to either science or common sense) into throwing the emergency brake on economic activity.

Once one model was accepted, others proliferated.

Perhaps the most notable one was that from the Institution for Health Metrics and Evaluation. This one, like the non-factual Imperial College model, produced Doomsday results that led to panicked governors believing they had to ‘do something’ by shutting down most economic activity.

These models had one unifying feature.

They were all wildly and spectacularly implausible and were proven wildly and spectacularly wrong.

They are also all promoted by a DEMOCRAT-run website (https://covidactnow.org/) that bombarded state, county and local governments with scary "data" on a daily basis to prolong the panic for political purposes.

https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/04/09/815099/

The bigger issue is that for about a year after there was no doubt that the models were BullShit policy was still based upon them, and we were sold the policy based upon them.

It was fraud/abuse.

 

[Diogenes]

Once the models were proven to be nonsense, an industry arose to defend them.

One of the better apologia was this gem from The Atlantic, Don’t Believe the COVID-19 Models; That’s not what they’re for.

"The most important function of epidemiological models is as a simulation, a way to see our potential futures ahead of time, and how that interacts with the choices we make today. With COVID-19 models, we have one simple, urgent goal: to ignore all the optimistic branches and that thick trunk in the middle representing the most likely outcomes. Instead, we need to focus on the branches representing the worst outcomes, and prune them with all our might. Social isolation reduces transmission, and slows the spread of the disease. In doing so, it chops off branches that represent some of the worst futures. Contact tracing catches people before they infect others, pruning more branches that represent unchecked catastrophes.

At the beginning of a pandemic, we have the disadvantage of higher uncertainty, but the advantage of being early: The costs of our actions are lower because the disease is less widespread. As we prune the tree of the terrible, unthinkable branches, we are not just choosing a path; we are shaping the underlying parameters themselves, because the parameters themselves are not fixed. If our hospitals are not overrun, we will have fewer deaths and thus a lower fatality rate. That’s why we shouldn’t get bogged down in litigating a model’s numbers. Instead we should focus on the parameters we can change, and change them."

It is a great example of kernels of truth being used to justify bullshit projections that devastated our finances without demonstrably proving that they saved a single life.

 

[Hawkeye10]

Once the models were proven to be nonsense, an industry arose to defend them.

One of the better apologia was this gem from The Atlantic, Don’t Believe the COVID-19 Models; That’s not what they’re for.

"The most important function of epidemiological models is as a simulation, a way to see our potential futures ahead of time, and how that interacts with the choices we make today. With COVID-19 models, we have one simple, urgent goal: to ignore all the optimistic branches and that thick trunk in the middle representing the most likely outcomes. Instead, we need to focus on the branches representing the worst outcomes, and prune them with all our might. Social isolation reduces transmission, and slows the spread of the disease. In doing so, it chops off branches that represent some of the worst futures. Contact tracing catches people before they infect others, pruning more branches that represent unchecked catastrophes.

At the beginning of a pandemic, we have the disadvantage of higher uncertainty, but the advantage of being early: The costs of our actions are lower because the disease is less widespread. As we prune the tree of the terrible, unthinkable branches, we are not just choosing a path; we are shaping the underlying parameters themselves, because the parameters themselves are not fixed. If our hospitals are not overrun, we will have fewer deaths and thus a lower fatality rate. That’s why we shouldn’t get bogged down in litigating a model’s numbers. Instead we should focus on the parameters we can change, and change them."

It is a great example of kernels of truth being used to justify bullshit projections that devastated our finances without demonstrably proving that they saved a single life.

And almost nowhere in Regime Media did you see anywhere that policy was being made based upon known BullShit....only in Alt Media such as Darkhorse was this pointed out.

 

[Diogenes]

No one has an objection to a bunch of geeks running computer simulations as an exercise in onanism.

But that is not what happened here.

These models were given a high profile by left-leaning academicians and massive coverage by the Trump-hating press.

They were clearly represented as predictions of what WOULD happen.

The other tack being taken was to say that "the models are only wrong because we actually did things that the models recommended and avoided the worst case scenario".

This is from Philip Bump at the ultra-liberal Washington Post:

A notable shift downward in projected deaths from coronavirus is already being spun as "experts were wrong!!" instead of "hey, the thing experts said would drive down deaths might be driving down deaths."

https://t.co/HpUPAyc5tx pic.twitter.com/XLPD39dQfF

— Philip Bump (@pbump) April 9, 2020

The problem is, that was a lie.

The worst case scenarios were clearly predicated upon us doing exactly what we did.

 

[Hawkeye10]

No one has an objection to a bunch of geeks running computer simulations as an exercise in onanism.

But that is not what happened here.

These models were given a high profile by left-leaning academicians and massive coverage by the Trump-hating press.

They were clearly represented as predictions of what WOULD happen.

The other tack being taken was to say that "the models are only wrong because we actually did things that the models recommended and avoided the worst case scenario".

This is from Philip Bump at the ultra-liberal Washington Post:

A notable shift downward in projected deaths from coronavirus is already being spun as "experts were wrong!!" instead of "hey, the thing experts said would drive down deaths might be driving down deaths."

https://t.co/HpUPAyc5tx pic.twitter.com/XLPD39dQfF

— Philip Bump (@pbump) April 9, 2020

The problem is, that was a lie.

The worst case scenarios were clearly predicated upon us doing exactly what we did.

As Bret constantly points out the policy and advice was not just bad, it was the inverse of a good approach, which cant happen by incompetence/accident.

 

[Hawkeye10]

Exactly like how Anti-Truth, not just not the truth but the opposite of the truth, is almost never seen in the wild....when we see a lot of it as we do now we know that we are witnessing a brainwashing program....that we are victims of abuse.