80852
  • Log in
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

The Modellers Keep On Making the Same Errors – And the Implications Are Huge

by Michael Curzon
9 October 2021 2:29 PM
The Modellers Keep On Making the Same Errors – And the Implications Are Huge

There follows a guest post from our in-house doctor, formerly a senior medic in the NHS, who draws attention to the errors made repeatedly by the modellers and government advisors and the huge implications of them.

Napoleon Bonaparte remarked that “history is the version of past events that people have decided to agree on”. When the official version of the pandemic is written, I wonder what analysis will be made of the role of statistical modellers and public health experts in driving Government policy over the last 18 months?

To inform this question it may be helpful to examine the recent evidence of how predictions have matched up to real events. For example, on September 8th, SPI-M-O (one of the multitudinous acronym salad bodies advising the Government), produced a paper entitled “Medium-term projections“.

Perhaps mindful of the woeful inaccuracy of previous predictions, the very first sentence heavily caveats the entire document:

These projections are not forecasts or predictions. They represent a scenario in which the trajectory of the epidemic continues to follow the trends that were seen in the data up to September 6th.

If that is the level of confidence the authors of the report have in their own abilities, one rather wonders what value this publication contains – yet this is the level of advice being given to decision-makers.

Firstly, to the “projection” of admissions. The document is in PDF format, so I am unable to reproduce it here, but the graphical representations show a 90% confidence interval fan chart for the period September 12th-28th. Hospital admissions in England are “projected” to be between 600 to 1,200 per day – a fairly wide spread. Graph One shows what actually happened – daily admissions on the blue bars, seven-day moving averages on the brown line.

It is clear that admissions have been consistently below the lower ‘projection’ for the entire period and the seven-day moving average at the end of the month was below 500 admissions per day.

For context, it is helpful to present that period of September alongside the data from earlier and later in the year in Graph Two.

So, having projected that hospital admissions would continue to rise, the real-world data shows that they in fact fell quite significantly over the period in question.

Earlier in the year, the influential modelling group at Imperial College produced a ‘projection’ for SAGE looking at the effects of lifting Covid restrictions on July 19th.

 In this paper, they estimated that hospital admissions by mid-September would be between 2,500 per day (optimistic case) and 12,000 per day (pessimistic case). The real data shows the average figure to be around 700 admissions per day.

Total patients in hospital testing positive for Covid have also continued to fall, as have patients being treated for acute Covid over the period – Graph Three shows that as of October 5th there were 3,630 patients being treated for acute Covid in English hospitals with a further 1,231 patients testing positive for Covid but being treated primarily for another condition.

In line with these trends, the ICU Covid bed occupancy has also fallen – depicted in Graph Four.

On July 7th, SPI-M-O produced a report containing data from three modelling groups (Imperial, Warwick and LSTMH) in relation to ‘projections’ after lifting of Covid restrictions on July 19th.

The data is quite dense, but in summary, their most optimistic projections around admissions, hospital inpatient and ICU load and deaths were overestimates by at least a factor of two. Worst-case predictions were overestimates by up to 10 fold. Positive tests in the community were predicted to be over 100,000 per day by the end of September – the reality was around 35,000 and the ratio of hospital admissions to cases has been falling steadily from around 8% at the beginning of the year to around 2% now.

The point of my article today is not to poke fun at data modellers, most of whom are probably trying their best to be helpful. My intention is to observe that almost all ‘projections’ I have seen over the last year have shown a remarkable consistency in grossly overestimating the numbers of Covid hospital admissions – yet the modellers and governmental advisors do not appear to have adjusted their calculations in light of observable real events and keep making the same errors. This constant catastrophising has real-world implications – not just for civil liberties, but for cancer diagnosis, chronic disease management and not least the state of the economy, which pays for the Health Service.

We have a long tradition of politicising healthcare in this country, with a corresponding corrosive effect on sensible decision making. The Covid pandemic has taken the tendency a step further by politicising a specific individual pathogen. I fear we are about to compound the error by extending the precedent to all seasonal respiratory infections. Having crossed the Rubicon of national lockdowns, there now seems to be an appetite among senior Government advisors for repeating the mistake. Professor Ferguson, giving evidence last week to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Covid, referred to ‘Plan B’ – in relation to re-imposition of societal restrictions should Covid hospital admissions exceed a threshold of 1,200 per day. Professor Van Tam has warned the public about the possibility of a serious influenza outbreak this winter and attendant pressure on the NHS. Is this evidence of prudent governmental contingency planning or ‘pitch rolling’ for re-introduction of ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions’?

I close this piece with an observation from another significant historical figure – Winston Churchill – a journalist and author before he became Prime Minister. Churchill remarked that “history will be kind to me – for I intend to write it myself”.

It is known that our current Prime Minister is an admirer of Churchill. I wonder how that enquiry will turn out?

Tags: Daily CasesHospitalisationsImperial CollegeModellingSAGE

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Government Considering Scrapping Free Covid Tests, Freeing up Billions of Pounds

Next Post

Councils Running “Vaccination Webinars” in Effort to Get Consent from Parents to Jab Their Children

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

41 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

To view today's newsletter click here

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editors Picks
U.S. Medicines Regulator to Add Warning to Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines Over Link to Heart Inflammation

Covid Vaccines More Likely to Put You in Hospital Than Keep You Out, BMJ Editor’s Analysis of Pfizer and Moderna Trial Data Finds

22 June 2022
by Will Jones
Why Healthcare Settings Should Drop Their Mask Requirements

Masks are Not Protective, Says Health & Safety Executive

24 June 2022
by Niall McCrae
News Round Up

News Round-Up

24 June 2022
by Toby Young
Climate Scientist Says Humans Cause Less Than 0.05°C of Global Warming and Warns of “Anarchy” From “Delusional” Net Zero Policies

Climate Scientist Says Humans Cause Less Than 0.05°C of Global Warming and Warns of “Anarchy” From “Delusional” Net Zero Policies

24 June 2022
by Chris Morrison
BBC Boycotts Mayor’s Briefings After Bristol Council Banned Reporter for Quizzing him over 9,000-Mile Flight for Climate Conference

BBC Boycotts Mayor’s Briefings After Bristol Council Banned Reporter for Quizzing him over 9,000-Mile Flight for Climate Conference

24 June 2022
by Will Jones
News Round Up

News Round-Up

36
Why Healthcare Settings Should Drop Their Mask Requirements

Masks are Not Protective, Says Health & Safety Executive

20
Climate Scientist Says Humans Cause Less Than 0.05°C of Global Warming and Warns of “Anarchy” From “Delusional” Net Zero Policies

Climate Scientist Says Humans Cause Less Than 0.05°C of Global Warming and Warns of “Anarchy” From “Delusional” Net Zero Policies

18
Is Hitler’s Invasion of Poland a Good Analogy for Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine?

Is Hitler’s Invasion of Poland a Good Analogy for Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine?

29
Daily Sceptic ‘Fact Checked’ Over Claim That CO2 Increase Lags Behind Global Warming So Cannot Cause It – But That is What the Data Show

Daily Sceptic ‘Fact Checked’ Over Claim That CO2 Increase Lags Behind Global Warming So Cannot Cause It – But That is What the Data Show

24
Why Healthcare Settings Should Drop Their Mask Requirements

Masks are Not Protective, Says Health & Safety Executive

24 June 2022
by Niall McCrae
Daily Sceptic ‘Fact Checked’ Over Claim That CO2 Increase Lags Behind Global Warming So Cannot Cause It – But That is What the Data Show

Daily Sceptic ‘Fact Checked’ Over Claim That CO2 Increase Lags Behind Global Warming So Cannot Cause It – But That is What the Data Show

23 June 2022
by Chris Morrison
We Should Welcome the Lab Leak Theory, Argues Biologist

Did SARS-CoV-2 Originate in Wuhan in 2019 or Earlier Elsewhere?

23 June 2022
by John Collis
U.S. Medicines Regulator to Add Warning to Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines Over Link to Heart Inflammation

Covid Vaccines More Likely to Put You in Hospital Than Keep You Out, BMJ Editor’s Analysis of Pfizer and Moderna Trial Data Finds

22 June 2022
by Will Jones
The BBC’s Dishonest Attack on Ivermectin

Ivermectin Study’s Negative Conclusion is at Odds With Its Findings of Significant Clinical Benefit

21 June 2022
by Will Jones

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
The Daily Sceptic
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© 2022 Skeptics Ltd.

No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter

© 2022 Daily Sceptic.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Please note: To be able to comment on our articles you'll need to be a registered donor

Already have an account?
Please click here to login Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment