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Can We Say, Definitively, that the SAGE Models are Wrong?

by Toby Young
27 July 2021 12:44 PM

Today we’re publishing a guest piece by a PhD epidemiologist trained at a Russell Group University and a retired former Professor of Forensic Science and Biological Anthropology looking at the most recent models submitted to SAGE from Warwick University, Imperial College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and concluding that all three got their projections for the summer badly wrong for the usual reasons – the modellers underestimated the impact of seasonality on the lifecycle of the virus and overestimated the impact of lockdown restrictions. Here is the conclusion:

The rest of the U.K. is now following the trend in Scotland, which showed a rapid fall in infections from the end of spring and beginning of summer, as Sweden did in 2020. Are we simply experiencing a late impact of seasonality on suppression of spread, which has finally taken effect?

Reported positives peaked just prior to ‘Freedom Day’ in England and about three weeks earlier in Scotland. There is no sign of any stall in the falling trajectory of infections in either country, as could be attributed to the relaxation of restrictions on ‘Freedom Day’. This would be not at all surprising to those who observed the lack of impact of ‘opening up’ in Texas and Florida some months ago.

On the basis of current infection data, the SAGE models are already wrong.

So must be the assumptions of virus transmission and effects of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions – and lack of effect of nature – on which they are based.

It begs the question as to why the Government and media have again so enthusiastically engaged with consistently disappointing predictions leading to such damaging public health policy.

None of this should be a distraction from the point that lockdowns cause a good deal of harm to physical and mental health and to the economy, far outweighing any presumed benefit – if any can be shown. The models, NPIs and lockdowns are about politics, not science.

Worth reading in full.

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The SAGE Models are Already Wrong

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26 Comments
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Major Panic in the jabby jabbys
Major Panic in the jabby jabbys
3 years ago

so are SAGE models not The Science then?

16
0
RW
RW
3 years ago

According to a recent Facebook-ad PHE is now “preparing for a worst-case winter scenario”. This implies that they must be pretty certain that the “worst-case summer scenario” Neil “No lockdown will keep my cock down!” Ferguson referred to as “inevitable” last week won’t happen.

14
0
yohodi
yohodi
3 years ago

SAGE…Soothsayers Against Genuine Evidence.

30
0
William Gruff
William Gruff
3 years ago
Reply to  yohodi

Subjecting Analysis to Gross Exaggeration?

2
0
MikeAustin
MikeAustin
3 years ago

Can we just stop using these bogus so-called ‘cases’. They are meaningless figures and bear little relation to actual illness and death.

30
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago

The models are always wrong, but these models are not even useful as they are the opposite of what happens and have negative predictive usefulness.

25
0
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

Attempts to predict the future are always wrong. Even (even more so) when they’re based on complicated and messy computer programs not even the people working on them understand.

That’s just the techie equivalent of trying to read it out of the layout of guts in animals.

14
0
miketa1957
miketa1957
3 years ago
Reply to  RW

Its not quite as bad as that, for example predicting the flight of a canon ball is pretty well spot-on.

But you are right. Software engineer here. Predicting something like this is more akin to predicting the weather or the financial markets. There is no way you can have any confidence in the predictions without being able to compare predictions with real outcomes, but in this case the real outcomes to compare against are few and far between (and clearly not ameneable to experiment).

There is no way anyone should attribute any significance to the models’ predictions.

Last edited 3 years ago by miketa1957
13
-1
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  miketa1957

To quote one of my physics lecturers of old “The usual assumptions are implied. The austronaut has neither mass nor extent”. Or, even nicer, a former navy superior “This was a so-called five mile shot. The rocket flew for five miles and then fell into the water and we don’t know why”.

🙂

Can’t even remotely get this to work using multiple threads and won’t fork it instead because we’re either ideologically blinded VMS fans and/ or nobody ever even got this to compile outside of Ferguson’s Windows laptop is entirely damning.

The mere fact that this program is a chaotic system whose parts interact in unpredictable ways doesn’t make it a suitlable “model” of some other chaotic system.

6
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  RW

I dont think Fergusson even knows how little he knows about programming when you get those sort of comments in the code.

It’s not a model it’s an expensive simulated dice.

13
0
JohnK
JohnK
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

If he had tried to be a bookmaker, he’d be bankrupt by now!

1
0
prod_squadron
prod_squadron
3 years ago

Cartoons like this Bob one are brilliant not least because humourous ridicule is an excellent device for swinging things our way. See also the photo circulating today of Macron so heavily festooned in Polynesian garlands that he looks like a floating tourist boat and it utterly punctures his image. This approach secretly appeals to the majority, regardless of stance. It has to be the right side of bitchy. Snide is too much.

17
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago

We had a very strong idea they were wrong from the start, and it was proved shortly afterwards beyond a reasonable doubt.

11
0
NonCompliant
NonCompliant
3 years ago

To my memory not one single modelled prediction SAGE has made has come true.

In a private business these jokers would’ve been fired by June 2020.

Fake it til you make it?

24
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago
Reply to  NonCompliant

I can’t think of anything coming out of SAGE that was worthwhile.

I do know that when I experimented with a prediction – against a ludicrous one pushed by SAGE – it came out over 100 times closer to the actuality. And that never pretended to be more than intelligent guess work, using a spreadsheet and a graph!

13
0
NeilofWatford
NeilofWatford
3 years ago

‘It begs the question as to why the Government and media have again so enthusiastically engaged with consistently disappointing predictions …’
To answer the question – within the Media because their paymasters (Gates, Soros, BigTech, Big Corps) tell them to. With UK Government, the Reset doctrine requires the destruction of family, small businesses and freedom to travel, and most importantly, our Judeo-Christian culture.

20
0
Dodgy Geezer
Dodgy Geezer
3 years ago
Reply to  NeilofWatford

Actually, I think it’s simpler. It’s that they had no idea what to do, and then an activist scientist poked his head around the door and said “Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea….” .

6
-1
tom171uk
tom171uk
3 years ago
Reply to  Dodgy Geezer

…you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off…

7
0
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago

Can we say, definitively, that ZZ Top and Brian Blessed have beards?

2
0
annicx
annicx
3 years ago
Reply to  Moist Von Lipwig

Well, no- a certain Mr Beard doesn’t have a beard so that model is only 75% accurate…

2
0
Dodgy Geezer
Dodgy Geezer
3 years ago

ALL models are ‘wrong’, in the sense that they do not mirror real life completely, and so have some degree of inaccuracy.

The question is whether this is small enough to be ignored, or sufficiently large to make the modelling useless for the task you want it to do.

Climate models are a good example of the latter – they are not accurate because they are based on incorrect premises, and they are now failing badly. The usual trick, and I am sure that the Covid modellers will follow suit, is to add fudged estimations which are intended to bring the final answer a bit closer to reality, and then claim that things are near enough. The Climate people have now gone beyond that and are into ‘Look, there’s a squirrel!’ territory…..

5
-1
annicx
annicx
3 years ago
Reply to  Dodgy Geezer

The incorrect premises thing is a real problem when trying to talk to anyone- particularly the young- about climate change. They don’t start from 0, they start from something like, ‘CO2 is evil and poisonous – we’re producing CO2- we are evil. With that sort of thinking, you can’t get anywhere. Ask someone why they think CO2 is poisonous, why they think there is a ‘climate emergency’, or why climate change in itself is bad and they just throw insults at you- they simply will not think or question the premise. Sadly it’s the same with Covid; almost everyone I speak to about it thinks it’s the no.1 killer and to catch it is almost certain death. I have come to prefer the company of my dogs more and more over the past few years.

5
0
Philipleigh
Philipleigh
3 years ago

There is obviously a plan being followed here.It doesn’t matter whether the modelling is right or wrong or the data rigged. These articles and Daily Sceptic itself are doing the equivalent of studying the train track while a high speed express bears down on them.

5
0
annicx
annicx
3 years ago
Reply to  Philipleigh

I am aware of this and am doing all I can to ensure that myself and my family are not in its path. I have given up trying to convince others as they clearly do not wish to save themselves and would prefer to be part of the bleating majority. In Sheffield today they were shuffling about, masked and fearful, presumably vaccinated, without any idea what it is that they fear. I find it hard to believe that any rational person would behave like this- walking around in the open air with a piece of cloth across their face as if it will save them from something that clearly isn’t causing unmasked people to keel over and die. What hope is there for such people?

1
0
William Gruff
William Gruff
3 years ago
Reply to  annicx

Hopefully none.

1
0
William Gruff
William Gruff
3 years ago

That cartoon may well be the finest I have seen in my sixty five and not quite a half years on this planet. Brilliant, especially the placing of Johnson’s left arm.

2
0

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