Day: 8 May 2020

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Today is Victory in Europe Day, the 75th anniversary of the day the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. To mark the occasion, I've decided to replace the usual newspaper front page with a picture of Winston Churchill. Many readers of this site will be aware of the disconnect between the victory we're celebrating today and the ongoing restrictions on our liberty that we're expected to endure without complaint for the foreseeable future. One particular reader – a distinguished journalist and author who cannot say what he really thinks about the lockdown without jeopardising his career – has sent me what he'd like to say publicly. I'm sure many of you will share his sentiments. I know I do. There’s a horrible irony that the 75th-anniversary of VE Day should fall during the lockdown. The British nation fought the Nazis to preserve our ancient freedoms, so that future generations would be able to live without fear. At this moment, Parliament is no longer properly functioning, jury trials have been suspended (perhaps permanently), technology giants appear to be censoring free speech, protest is deemed a dangerous activity and the citizens of this country remain under indefinite house arrest. A Government adviser, Professor Dingwall, of Nottingham University, today admits (in the Telegraph) that the Government has created a “climate of fear” ...

How Convincing is Imperial College’s COVID-19 Model?

A reader who describes himself as a "normal person" has tried to make sense of Imperial College's notorious March 16th paper. He doesn't have much luck. Imperial College really needs to be a bit more transparent about the assumptions it used in its model and how it reached the figures of 510,000 dead if we "do nothing" and 250,000 dead if we stuck with mitigation. How can voters make up their own minds about whether the Government was right to lock down the country unless "the science" is set out in a way that lay people can understand? Have you read any of Imperial College’s papers about COVID-19? Probably not. Nor had I. But we’ve all heard about them in the news. I decided to sit down and read the one that contained the advice to lock down the UK. I’ve written this from the perspective of a “normal person”. I’m not a professional statistician, though I know a bit about it. Nor do I write computer software. In fact I’m a professional historian, which means that above all else I ask questions. I also worked in secondary education for a decade, where I was continually subjected to predictive modelling that was always wrong and always based on a vast number of assumptions that ignored reality. I became used to ...

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