This morning I wrote that despite the British Covid variant – supposedly much more deadly and contagious – being dominant in the UK since December, positive cases peaked 10 days before the January lockdown, and instead of a Christmas surge, infections plummeted in January and also failed to spike in schools when they reopened in March. In Denmark, too, the dominance of the British variant in January and February was marked not by a new surge in positive cases but precipitous decline, confounding predictions.
Now we have two more places that show the Kent variant is failing to live up to the hype. The table below from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control shows that as of February 27th, Florida was the state with the highest prevalence of the British variant (B.1.1.7) at 13.2%, and Texas comes in third at 7.1%.
These are also two of the most open states. Florida ended its restrictions in September and did not reimpose them in the winter, while Texas removed its remaining ones back at the start of March. So, for the past month neither has had any restrictions at all, let alone a lockdown “tough enough” to hold back the British variant. And what do we see? No new surge at all. The reopening in Texas even saw positive cases decline to their lowest level since last spring.
This isn’t modelling or prediction. It is cold, hard data on what happens when a state opens up or stays open for the winter. It is therefore also solid proof that restrictions are not needed to “control” the coronavirus. We already knew that from Sweden in the spring. Now we know it from Florida in the winter, and Texas, which is near the bottom of the pack when it comes to vaccinations, shows us what we can expect when we open up, British variant or no British variant.
Of course, there will still be new outbreaks of COVID-19, as some countries in Europe are currently experiencing. But how much more proof do governments and their scientists need that the threat is manifestly manageable without unprecedented restrictions on liberty, the efficacy of which is anyway unproven?
Kent Covid – not so much a tiger as a pussycat.
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No, modellers should be fired and imprisoned in Michael Moore’s underpants.
Yep: make the punishment fit the crime!
Which is easier than making Michael Moore’s underpants fit him.
Excuse me. I never followed their advice
Sorry Dr. David but the people behind this are not interested in models that fit reality, rather those that lead to their final ends, CCP style Social Credit or whatever they might be.
We were well aware of Ferguson’s malafides when his name appeared early 2020 as a government adviser enthusiastically demanding lockdown despite a decades long track record of getting disease modelling wrong, usually by a factor of ten.
This ^^^^ The PTB actively want to destroy livelihoods, small independent businesses, etc and demolish communities and social connection. They want to encourage alienation, isolation, etc because it induces greater continued docility and dependency on centralised systems, etc. It’s really weird this belief, after the last 20 months, last 20 years, last half decade, that governments and their think tanks and corporate partners actually care about any ordinary person’s life or livelihood.
The antithesis of David Cameron’s Big Society.
As I recall, with Bird flu in 2005, he was wrong by a factor of 342,000
It wouldn’t be a good idea for him to come in my local.People keep saying that they will ignore any future restrictions, but unless its in your own home they have you by the short and curlys, all shops licensed by the council, all licensed premise by the courts .
The power crazed Local Council were breathing down the neck of my employer during Lockdown 1; the firm has quite a wide public interface so The Council were forever issuing maniac diktats about good practice which, to be fair, the firm followed in appearance rather than substance, making sure that there was a digital trail to show that all the Council demands were passed to the staff rather than just verbally or over the phone.
I used to work for a catering company in a council building. My ex employers are almost the only catering outlet in our town which still follows guidelines, all staff masked. Although I believe staff can exempt themselves. When I quit last year, actually, it was my disciplinary hearing for not following the new rules, I was told as we are a council building we have to be strict.
I was browsing Tripadvisor last week, there were 2 comments about a restaurant complaining that staff wear masks.
The only private outfit that still asks me to wear a mask is a charity that provides transport to and from hospital.
I allow this indignity in part out of politeness but mostly because it avoids a £20.00 return trip by taxi.
Go for a religious exemption – as a Non-Conformist.
If this is being done under the cover of H&S legislation, get them to produce their evidence-based risk assessment. Risk assessments have to be based on evidence not some airy-fairy “I don’t wanna die” BS.
MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT REFUSE THE VACCINATION AND THE HEALTH PASS.
https://francemediasnumerique-com.translate.goog/2021/10/22/urgent-les-membres-du-parlement-europeen-refuse-la-vaccination-et-le-pass-sanitaire/?amp=1&s=09&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui
For themselves and their essential flunkies while they throw everybody else under the bus.
They are chronic sufferers of DAISANAID Syndrome.
It was expressed on behalf of all citizens if you listen to it properly!
FWIW here’s my take on it all. There was a massive over reaction to start with because they knew it was an escaped gain of function bio weapon from Wuhan, and they shat themselves, then the people who funded the Wuhan research bigged up their new vaccine, and the govt believed their speel, they believed that when all the vulnerable were jabbed, it would all be over.
Not worked out like they thought has it?. Who new that the jabbed become spreaders, who knew about A.D.E.?.
Jabbing children, vaccine passports whats next ?
So many conspiracy theories have come true, so which is your favorite?
Depopulation
Great financial debt forgiveness and currency reset.
China style social credit app
Green agenda .
Social credit app pilot goes live Jan 2022
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-pilot-to-help-people-eat-better-and-exercise-more
There was some old trout droning on in Parliament yesterday about the ‘government’s responsibility’ (FFS) to ensure people lead a healthy lifestyle, more exercise, less meat, more veg, smaller portions . . . and generally sucking all the fun out of life.
She may well be right but it’s got sod all to do with the government with or without their poxy apps.
Tory/Labour/Libdem or Nat? Dunno but she was wearing a mask.
Good pic. btw.
That’s socialism a generic term for a British MP.
China was propagandized into doing the lockdowns, as the CIA-controlled Hong Kong regime change ops were failing. Their lockdowns were then conveniently used as justification by Ferguson for the UK following suit.
Regarding Covid, the China government stated that they see worse all the time, They were handling multiple cases of pneumonic plague from Mongolia at the time – don’t both trying the mask BS with that bad boy. That is real BSL-4 grade stuff. They also stated that the worst thing to do was panic.
We survive much worse every year, but panic is the real danger
Good to read a considered, non-ranting argument and proposal.
The only modification I would make is that, while modellers try to solve the problem, they are immediately excluded from promoting their patently inaccurate current models.
The hard fact is that intelligent guess-work has been far more successful than mathematical models.
We are back to if the observations do not match the hypothetical model then the hypothesis is wrong.
This is exactly the same problem with climate models, except climate is definitely a chaotic system which makes hindcasting all but impossible, even taking real life data from the past and using it to calibrate the models is on a hiding to nothing.
Whether the same is true of epidemics is the great unknown. Do viruses act in a stochastic or non-stochastic way or a combination? Even if someone came up with a model as suggested, it would need to be run on multiple devices, multiple times and for completeness written in multiple computer languages, to rule out a fluke result. These same models would then need to duplicate the 1918-1920, 1958-1959 and the 1968-1970 episodes alongside the 2003 SARS outbreak.
The Met Office does have a section that is dedicated to examining the accuracy of their past weather predictions
There has, of course, not been time enough to apply this to Climate Change; their best attempt was to trawl through the sailing logs of the Royal Navy going back to when Samuel Pepys was in charge and trying to ‘back predict’ from those.
Agreed, but this assumes that the government wanted accuracy in the first place. They’ve been operating on “Don’t confuse me with facts, I’ve made me mind up”.
This is well worth a listen. RFK Jr is a hero.
I’ve just read this. coming out of Oz (ABC News website):
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-21/woolworths-coles-aldi-to-roll-out-vaccine-mandates-for-staff/100556872
Woolworths, Coles, Aldi to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for staff
In response I’ve sent the following query to Aldi via the company’s website:
On the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) News today (24 October), I’ve come across this headline: “Woolworths, Coles, Aldi to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for staff”.
Is it true that Aldi in Australia is doing this?
As a loyal Aldi customer in the UK I cannot countenance medical coercion in any form. Unless you can confirm that this report is false, I will regretfully be withdrawing my custom from Aldi in support of Australian Aldi staff who will be forced to quit their jobs as a result of this mandate.
Fuck. I rely on Aldi for my weekly shopping. But if they’re doing this in OZ under the Aldi name, time to boycott them.
Can everyone encourage as many people to do the same? Get this news out, and get some positive action on the go?
I don’t use Aldi/Lidles myself but the chances are the Australian outfit is an entirely different Company, like Sky News UK and Sky News Australia.
“By August 2019, there were 540 Aldi stores in Australia; Aldi had approximately 11 percent share of the grocery market in Australia in the previous year with sales of $9.2 billion. Aldi opened 26 new stores in 2018, but Aldi Australia CEO Tom Daunt predicted that “store growth would be slower in the future”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi
Same company from what I can make out.
In Germany, Aldi, Lidl and REWE in Hesse have confirmed that they will not adopt the 2G policy which has just been allowed there that excluded even tested unvaccinated from shopping.
They are also the ones who always accommodated the unmasked, in contrast to fully fascist Edeka.
In Australia, even golf clubs are now excluding the unvaccinated from playing, not just the Clubhouse.
Todays Golfer in the UK had a raving report on that development in its latest issue, which I complained about and gave as the reason for cancelling my subscription.
No no no no no….. We should not be governed by computers & technocrats!
STOP this BS, NOW!
It’s plain & it’s simple, government has no right to dictate freedom as a privilege, guilty until proven innocent before a jury. Anything else, is false imprisonment & unlawful.
We are the only ones that can stop this coup, I DO NOT consent, I will NOT comply, I will NOT conform.
Deleted UK Government Report Celebrates How Public Loves To “Conform”.
Good find but we’ve known about the Behavioural Insights Team and their knavish nudges since we read about them urging the government to enhance the fear of Covid as a substantial risk to the personal safety of members of the public.
I see the solitary downticker from Cheltenham is still on duty.
Haha! “Two little crutches”
Thanks for the downtick, 77.
‘Liber 77’ is the gematrian name for Liber OZ– a brief but popular publication by Aliester Crowley. The word ‘oz’, which means ‘strength’, is composed of two hebrew letters– ayin and zayin, which have gematrian values of 70 and 7 respectively, thus adding up to 77.
Thanks for the downtick, 77th.
“Liber 77′ is the gematrian name for Liber Oz – a brief publication by Aleister Crowley. The word ‘oz’, which means ‘strength’, is composed of two hebrew letters – ayin and zayin, which have gematrian values of 70 and 7 respectively, thus adding up to 77.”
They must be swapping shifts, theys 8 hours is up and the new one is taking over.
Nah – the have to attend medal ceremonies to receive their purple hearts in recognition of RSI received in front-line combat. I heard one guy was so devoted to saving comrades during an intense keyboard fight, that he died of wounds and is up for a posthumous Victoria Cross.
It’s (have to be careful with pro-nouns nowadays) got a twin.
Cheltenham? That explains a lot!!
This is a basic principle of modelling.
Its called ‘back testing’ and is the first thing you do once you’ve finished your model to test it’s robustness.
Although testing historically doesn’t always mean results will be sound going forward it is a good indication that your model has merit.
They should be able to immediately produce these test results because bank testing should have been done as a matter of course.
if those results are flawed then no reliance should be placed on the model
If they haven’t back tested then they and their models should be dismissed offhand as woefully inadequate and unprofessional.
You wouldn’t last 2 minutes in the City if you turned up with an untested model. You’d be laughed out if the room and any reputation you had would be in tatters.
The irony though is that the most back tested models then led and lead to the most spectacular blowups in finance.
The models do appear to produce a 95% confidence interval, but Ferguson only publicly announces the worst case. It is possible that the model most likely case to best case encompasses reality, but where’s the profit in that?
If he applied the same standards to commercial air taffic, the worst case results in flights crashing killing everbody. The reality of course is that almost all flights proceed totally without significant adverse reaction.
Ferguson should be forced to talk only about ‘most likely’ cases.
At this point shouldn’t the modellers be able to run their models against the data from the UK, France, Korea in fact any country and knowing the various lockdowns, controls, vaccine programs, cases, hospitalisations, deaths etc show us just how good their models are (or otherwise)?
No chance they will do that as everyone who is reasonably clued-up knows what it would show! With even a basic analysis it’s very clear that, worldwide, there is absolutely no correlation between measures taken and the outcomes – the sheeple have mostly been conned into believing that there is a clear relationship along the lines of more restrictions = fewer cases = fewer hospitalisations = fewer deaths, but that’s simply nothing like true in reality.
I agree that there should be some form of assessment and licensing for modellers, but as regards the current situation I don’t actually see any reason to give them any more chances or opportunities to prove themselves – they’ve already had too many opportunities, and have been one of the main drivers of massive social harm, on the back of predictions which have repeatedly been completely wrong.
SAGE should be disbanded, and any future modelling of Covid based on actual hard numbers (of which there are plenty), and all models checked against what has actually happened in the past eighteen months.
And even then, such modelling should serve ONLY to allow planning of future healthcare capacity, not as an excuse to impose vicious and destructive restricitons.
It’s not too difficult to predict the past. In fact it’s one of the challenges when testing models that you don’t inadvertently optimise your model to predict the past. Models must be tested rigorously and professionally on both historical data (of which there will probably be a lot), and future data (which means live testing).
If you set the goal that their model must predict the past, then the chances are they could optimise it to do so. Also, being successful with one historical event wouldn’t provide a great deal of confidence – sample size too small.
Models must also be tested for an appropriate period of time on live data – to establish whether or not they’re fit for purpose. And if they are fit for purpose, to what degree of accuracy? The test-result metrics then feed in to the ‘go, no-go’ decision as to whether to use the model in a live environment.
In my opinion, models that haven’t been rigorously and professionally tested, should be given a different name such as perhaps ‘formalised opinions’. Otherwise the reputation of modelling is liable to be trashed.
We should ask the modellers to do magic tricks like this, then defenestrate them.
Ferguson has never been remotely right and his models are so flawed they are useless; yet he still has a job? Clown World
He is doing exactly what is wanted by the people who put him, and keep him, in place.
He will receive a knighthood as a loyal servant to ?????.
Of course, any software model that seeks to fulfil Prof. Livermore’s requirements must be provided with its source code.
How often do we see five-day weather forecasts change with each passing day, and the day of interest will have the morning forecast again say something different, and yet the actual day’s weather is not as any of the forecasts? Can epidemic modellers do better than meteorologist modellers? I doubt it. But perhaps the folly lies with those who use the model output to govern our lives. Not taking a raincoat and finding yourself in a shower isn’t a major calamity whereas destroying people’s lives by slavishly following epidemic modellers and shutting down society is a major calamity!
Perhaps in a few years time our politicians will look back like Winston Churchill who, when asked if there was anything he would change if he had his time over, remarked “Yes. I wish I had played the black instead of the red at Cannes and Monte Carlo.” Boris please note!