by Sue Denim
A source of frustration for many of us is how journalists don’t seem to be learning lessons about academic models. It’s as though their need to report on anything new makes them extremely vulnerable to trusting the output of discredited processes and people.
Take this piece in UnHerd by Tom Chivers called “What’s the point of contact tracing?” It’s about a paper entitled “Modelling the health and economic impacts of Population-wide Testing, contact Tracing and Isolation (PTTI) strategies for COVID-19 in the UK“. It starts with a brief hint that maybe epidemiology models can be problematic (my emphases in bold):
Well, one interesting paper just published by researchers at University College London looks at the impact contact tracing will have on the economy relative to lockdown …
Some caveats: modelling is inherently uncertain. Manheim [an author] says that the model is robust — the headline outcomes remain broadly consistent even if the assumptions and inputs are tweaked — but it’s just one paper, and so far not peer-reviewed.
Note how the academic’s opinion of his own work is given as evidence it’s correct, as if this provides any insight. This paper has a whopping 26 authors, yet they apparently couldn’t wait for peer review before sending it to journalists. Let’s do a quick review for them.
The introduction says this:
Mathematical models can be used to predict COVID-19 epidemic trends following relaxation of lockdown.
It provides a citation for this claim, the first in the paper: Professor Ferguson’s discredited Report 9. ICL’s model in reality proves the opposite – it couldn’t predict COVID-19 epidemic trends as evidenced by the results when applied to Sweden. And as is by now well documented, this work has severe and retraction-worthy methodological errors that make it unsuitable for citation. Given the media coverage of the many flaws in Report 9, it’s unlikely the authors of this new paper didn’t know that.
And the paper goes downhill from there. It states:
We assume an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 1.0%
No source for this number is provided. There are many studies showing a far lower estimated IFR, more in the range of 0.1% – an order of magnitude difference. The US CDC has dropped its best estimate of the IFR to <0.3%. Assuming an IFR of 1.0% requires significant discussion and evidence to contradict all those other sources, but none is provided.
Chivers says “UnHerd has spoken to various people who think it’s lower than that” but otherwise accepts this exceptionally high value as a given. The story wouldn’t work if he didn’t.
The paper goes on to say (my emphasis):
Recent estimates suggest that only 6.8% of the population… had been infected… this level of presumed immunity is a long way from the roughly 60% required for herd immunity without “overshoot”…. Consequently… without implementing effective provision of testing, contact tracing, and isolation, in conjunction with other measures, the UK may be at risk of either spending two thirds to three quarters of time locked down, or experiencing an uncontrolled epidemic with between 250,000 and 550,000 deaths.
The authors assume the 60% figure although the epidemic ended in many places without that level being achieved, implying it cannot possibly be correct. At least one paper has explored whether this is caused by people having some pre-existing immunity from common cold infections. They also double down on by now bizarre and absurd predictions of an “uncontrolled epidemic” with half a million deaths, in spite of the fact that countries and states that hardly locked down at all have seen no difference in how the epidemic proceeded.
Still, it’s not all bad. Their software is at least published on GitHub along with the paper this time. It’s written in Python, which is harder to screw up than C. They also helpfully document their assumptions. In prior rounds some people have raised the criticism that errors introduced via bugs are likely to be small relative to assumption errors. For programs written in C this isn’t really the case (as I explain in the appendix of this article). But let’s make an assumption of our own here and assume there are no bugs in this new model. Let’s instead look at their assumptions.
We start with a meta-scientific assumption. The README contains a comment indicative of the catastrophic mentality epidemiologists have developed:
we believe in checking models against each other, as it’s the best way to understand which models work best in what circumstances.
No. The best way to understand which models work best is to compare them to reality, not to other models. This circular definition of success has been presented by Imperial College as well. It seems the field of epidemiology has completely lost its grip on the scientific method.
In the documentation the authors provide a variety of arguments for why their research isn’t invalid despite making assumptions they know are wrong. But often the explanations boil down to “just because” (my emphasis):
[We assume] The outbreak or epidemic is homogeneous in space and time. In reality, the UK is undergoing several COVID-19 outbreaks… In general, a model of a single large outbreak cannot be used to reproduce the dynamics of smaller outbreaks separated in time… This model does not represent those different, coupled outbreaks, it represents a single outbreak.Justification: this is a simplifying assumption. In the case of COVID-19, the major outbreaks in the most populous cities are separated in time by only a couple of generations. We argue that this is close enough that, to a first approximation, the differences can be disregarded and valid insights gained by considering the ensemble as one large outbreak
Although they say they “argue” this assumption doesn’t matter, no actual argument is provided in the documentation. They just assert it’s all fine. The paper doesn’t appear to contain such an argument either.
As they admit, the real reason for this assumption is just to make the coding easier.
[We assume] The population is homogeneous and each individual behaves in the same way and is affected in the same way by the virus. This is manifestly untrue of the real world. Justification: this is another simplifying assumption.
Shouldn’t they fix these before making predictions?
Last one (my emphasis):
Face coverings were assumed to reduce 𝛽 by 30%. This is based on an estimated 60% effectiveness of face coverings in reducing transmission and a conservative assumption that they would only be worn 50% of the time, i.e. for 50% of the contacts occurring in the modelled scenario trajectories.
These two claims sound like they’re based on real observations. Of the papers cited, neither appears to actually contain these claims. The first bolded sentence cites this paper which is the output of yet another model. The second sentence cites this response to criticism, which doesn’t appear to talk about how long people wear masks for at all. It’s unclear why they think it justifies this “conservative” assumption that so neatly happens to be exactly 50% – not more or less.
Although this paper hasn’t been peer reviewed it’s unlikely the peer review process in epidemiology would filter this sort of problem out. Papers in this field appear to be worse than useless – not only do they routinely describe a fantasy world the authors know isn’t real, but nobody seems to care. Circular reasoning runs rampant and yet journalists like Chivers – who is more scientifically literate than most – still present the resultant “findings” to the population, knowing that readers won’t call them out on it.
It’s time readers demand journalists push the mute button on these kinds of papers and the modellers who write them. If academics want to be taken seriously in future, they should start creating public databases of past events and matching new outbreaks to them instead of trying to simulate whole societies. Empirical observation of the past can then be applied to estimate the future. Although this won’t require fancy modelling skills and may yield only a few papers, the results would be far more useful.
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What astonishes me about Germany is their extraordinary inability to learn from their past.
It’s certainly the treachery of the Leftards, and their abject masochism, that baffles me. Do they think they and their families are somehow impervious to their social engineering and suicidal policies? But the Left and Islam make suitable bedfellows when we look at their objectives, it seems;
”Islam is a religion built atop an easily collapsed house of cards — namely, the very self-serving and opportunistic words and deeds of its founder. Therefore, silencing any criticism against Muhammad has long been essential to Islam’s survival. Left unchecked, this “verbal war” will have a snowball effect: Other Muslims, exposed to such critical thinking, will start thinking critically, ultimately rebelling against and overthrowing the Islamic order.
Now consider how this applies to the so-called “Left.” Every day, from virtually every official institution and channel — academia, media, government, etc. — we are bombarded with very obvious and ludicrous lies (for example, that women can become men, that men can become pregnant, and so on and so forth). Does that mean most Americans believe this? No. But getting you to believe what is unbelievable has never really been the goal.
Rather, the ultimate goal is to condition you to never publicly challenge the official narrative. You must never openly blaspheme the official cult, thereby encouraging others to blasphemy and apostacy — the dreaded snowball effect every regime fears.
The Left cares little if, in the quiet of your own mind, you refuse to play along. All that matters is that you formally go along — that you formally acquiesce, even if through silent though implicit consent.
In short, the Left wants you to dread the consequences of openly defying its narrative — which, like Islam, is also built atop an easily collapsed house of cards.”
https://stream.org/dont-speak-radical-muslims-and-triggered-leftists-are-the-conjoined-twins-of-offense/
excellent
Here’s another ‘misunderstanding’, quoted in the article:
We always differentiated [between Islam and political Islam or Islamism].
Such a differentiation is false. izlam is a political ideology promoted by a death cult: death to unbelievers, death to apostates, death to those who mock or criticise izlam, death to innocent people jihadis choose to bomb, stab, chop, kill by vehicle to make a political point, death to disobedient daughters who prefer Western culture . . .
Hindu thuggees also believed in death, but they were regarded as a cult not a religion. Why is izlam regarded as a ‘world religion’? Sheer global numbers achieved by conquest/conversion and rapid reproduction.
What are ‘modern’ or ‘moderate’ muzlims? Are they of any use or help to us in the West in vocally opposing jihadists? No, they’re fearful and quiet, with good reason.
When push comes to shove, only genuine apostates will resist the call to rise up and join in the victory for izlam in yet another country ripe for the taking. The apostates won’t survive for long nor will anyone else who refuses to submit.
Newborns unfortunate enough to be born into izlam have ‘alluah akbar’ whispered into their ears, the beginning of an intense lifelong indoctrination that only very strong-minded people (such as the apostate who burns korans in Sweden) can reject.
izlam likes to refer to itself as the ‘Religion of Peace’, a lying slogan that some very stupid Western politicians including Dubya Bush & Dave Cameron liked to parrot after 9/11 and 7/7.
The ‘ROP’ calls itself that because it believes that PEACE on earth will come about only when they have obeyed allah by conquering/converting every nation to izlam – bringing about total submission of the world to allah.
Therefore, no more warfare.
Except, of course, the fighting for dominance between sunni, shia, wasabi and every other sect and sub-sect of izlam.
Agreed. They seem to think the danger to Germany is right wing National Socialism.
The true danger is that so many are easily led and will swallow whatever the ‘authorities’ shovel in their direction.
Since 2020 I realised the Germans are not unique in this respect. A significant portion of our own population was proven to be susceptible to extreme viewpoints at the expense of others. Also NZ, Australia, Canada, France, Austria, etc…
A very sobering realisation.
Eh? The authorities in Germany, France, UK etc have learnt from the past. What they have learnt is the more fear you create in a society, the easier it is to control.
In Japan they refer to immigrants as ”street-shitters”, and given the amount of footage I’ve seen of migrants using the public outdoor spaces as toilets I can attest to that. The Japanese have the right idea though, as do Hungary, and I’ll defer to Gad Saad, the Obe-Wan Kenobi of such things;
”Take Japan. It has a strong sense of identity such that it does not wish to have its culture and people invaded by immigrants. Hence, it has decided that few immigrants can become Japanese let alone illegal immigrants. Do they have a right to do that? Does a nation have a right to decide that it wishes to protect its culture, heritage, religion, etc? Does Saudi Arabia have a right to state that it wishes to remain forevermore an Islamic country? If the answer is “yes” then why is it objectionable for the West to say that they wish to maintain a Judeo-Christian identity? An ethos of Western values rooted in individual freedom and liberty. Regrettably, due to suicidal empathy, most immigrants who came to the West 20+ years ago to escape the hellish societies from which they came, are now being drowned by the same cultures from which they escaped. Individuals of the host societies no longer recognize their societies because they have been Islamized at a breathtaking rate. Are Western people allowed to be worried about the erasure of their societies or should they submit willingly by praying at the altar of suicidal empathy?”
https://x.com/GadSaad/status/1801358399801626962
Apparently we need all these millions of migrants because the leftists say “we have an ageing population” and “who will do all the NHS and care jobs”. ——-But Japan doesn’t seem to think the answer to any such alleged problems is to import millions of people and they certainly don’t get overrun with illegal aliens. Apparently the Japanese encourage high birthrates by giving tax breaks for people to have children.
What a squirming bunch of WEF/UN parasites we have deciding how we all live in this country and as Europe is turning to the right, here as usual we are so dumb we are about to do the opposite and elect more leftist mass immigration clutter.
The excuse of falling birth-rate and increasing aging population to justify inward migration does not agree with reality. Since I was born the UK population has grown by nearly 27 million, and mostly in the last 10 or so years. Also a falling population will be a benefit as more space will become available and house prices will fall allowing our young to afford homes. This last aspect could encourage young people to have children.
As you say it is the WEF/UN parasites that are driving this. Mass migration is a weapon.
” The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
UN’s Commission on Global Governance:
Yep
‘United Nations’ is a complete misnomer. That corrupt and rotting self-serving institution cares nothing for nations – it wants a One World government, a dictatorship with every enemy of democracy within it obliterating our sovereignty as nations and freedom as individuals.
President Trump was considering cutting American funding of the UN before he was robbed of his second term by charlatans. Hopefully, he’ll be re-elected, cut off the funding and encourage other Western countries to do the same.
I quite like visits from Jehovah’s Witnesses. I particularly like their willingness to debate their beliefs. They are clearly sincere believers and if they fail to win their argument they will walk away and maybe try another day.
Compare this with the dogmatic approach of Islamists who are unwilling to debate, and have frequently been observed to resort to violence when challenged. Indeed they fight amongst themselves over differences in interpretation of their holy scripts.
I remain forever sceptical of the claim that is the religion of peace and they will fight anyone who doesn’t agree.
Moslems began fighting amongst themselves as soon as Mohammed died. Then there was the Iran Iraq war and the current conflict in Yemen.
I think a few years passed between the death of Muhammad and the Iran / Iraq war.
Of course. I should have written ‘More recently…’
So what if the German Authorities called him “Enemy of Islam”? We should not be in the situation in any Western country where must watch what we say in case it provokes someone to try and murder you. It should not be wrong to express dislike of someone or a group especially at it seems perfectly acceptable to express dislike of Christianity and white people.
Since TRAITOR Smirkel betrayed Germany and the Germans by admitting millions of enemy invaders, the subsequent governments seem to cheerfully acquiesce in the izlamification of the land and the people they are supposed to protect. Their enemedia is equally to blame.
When those responsible are defeated by the AdF patriots, Smirkel and her successors should be tried and imprisoned for treason. The same applies to France when Marine le Pin triumphs, and the UK when our traitorous Left is beaten.
In every Western nation whose treacherous Leftard governments have flooded them with enemies and terrorists, those with blood on their hands deserve the severe backlash of anger and draconian punishment.
There is no political Islam, Islamism, modern muslims, there is just Islam.
Agreed and it’s all barbaric.
Cui bono? This is another example of the ‘authorities’ in Western ‘democracies’ provoking trouble and fear in the electorate which facilitates control orders. Katherine Gunn the ex-GCHQ whistle blower, makes plain there were sone exceedingly dodgy things going on with the murder of Sir Denis Amess MP. Almost every time there is a terrorist incident in the UK the m.s.m. report that the assailant was known to the authorities. Big events like 9/11 and the London bus bombings also benefit the ‘authorities.’