The United States government is indicating that the curve is breaking favorably
White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Brix warned the public not to panic when they hear about models and projections of the pandemic's spread. "Models are models," she said. "When people start talking about 20% of a population getting infected, it's very scary, but we don't...
www.realclearpolitics.com
We will see this play out. Even if the trajectory is reduced, how much is it reduced? If the old models where not accurate, why should we believe the new models now. If the government really believed these new models and assumptions wouldn’t we tell ford, GM, Tesla to scrap ventilator plans and return to normal production? Wouldn’t we halt construction on many thousand bed medical facilities around the country? Why the inconsistency with talk and action?
Here is what is odd to me. There is What appears to me logical inconsistencies with what they are saying.
1) First, we are told that we need to flatten the curve.
2) Massive world wide measures are taken to flatten transmission
3) They are now looking at lower than expected rates of transmission and saying that it’s not spreading as fast as projected. Well wasn’t that the point - I mean why quarantine anyone in the first if the expected outcome isn’t reduced transmission rates?
4) Based on what we have seen in other countries it takes about 2 weeks for people to get into trouble, and 20ish days on a ventilator to get off of it. In other words there is a big lag time from infection to outcome (live/die).
5) We have not had sufficient time in the US for this process to play out. I will be watching to see what happens in next 2 weeks.
Well, duh, isn’t this just expressing the expected obvious?Most of the world is on lockdown. We have never studied a disease with the world on lockdown, so how do you know what “normal” lockdown transmission rates looks like. Based on all the alterations to date, how can you make that projection accurately - well you can’t it’s just another model.
Second series of thing that is odd to me.
1) Study from England says 500k dead if nothing done
2) Italy disease rates and deaths begin to spike
3) Italy goes on lockdown
4) Italy’s deaths continue to grow, currently at 8250 (on lockdown for weeks)
5) Revised study from England says now only expect 20K deaths.
6) England and Italy have similar size populations
7) Italy on lockdown nearly 2 weeks is nearing 1/2 the new projected total deaths in England.
8) if the point of lockdowns is to reduce deaths, italy has been on lockdown so there is expectation of reduced death (vs letting it rip), and they still have almost 50% the number of projected deaths in England will lots of people that have yet to be infected - how does any of that add up?
9) England project running out of ICU beds will not be an issue, both Italy and Spain report deficiencies and high death rates because of it.
The problem with these recent model revisions are this. They rely on an assumption that has not been really tested. The assumption is that there is a very large population of people without symptoms in the population that are infected. Therefore the sick are unlucky and tons of people got infected and did fine. That would be great if true....but let’s get the data and prove that - this idea is based on another stinking model.
So right now it’s become, pick your expert, pick your model, and forecast whatever you want.
At the end of the day, I really don’t trust experts using models to predict the future, especially when dealing with unknowns. I’ve seen both be grossly wrong too many times to count. Which way they are wrong is hard to say, but in the area of making predictions their record is terrible. I wish I could find the thread, I had literally said this exact same thing like 3 months ago on a different topic.
Experts do well looking to the past to figure out what already happened, their track record has been terrible for forecasting the future.
I’m still left only being able to look at things around the world, and the picture I see does not add up to the words I hear.
At the end of the day, I hope these new models are correct, I hope we can all get back to work tomorrow, and I hope we are all safe and well. That would be the best outcome at the moment. I like everyone else desperately want to get back to eating out, traveling, and making money.