We’re publishing a guest post today by former Google software engineer Mike Hearn about the shortcomings of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s alarmist Omicron modelling which has spooked the Government.
Today the Telegraph reported that:
Experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) predict that a wave of infection caused by Omicron – if no additional restrictions are introduced – could lead to hospital admissions being around twice as high as the previous peak seen in January 2021.
Dr Rosanna Barnard, from LSHTM’s Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, who co-led the research, said the modellers’ most pessimistic scenario suggests that “we may have to endure more stringent restrictions to ensure the NHS is not overwhelmed”.
As we’ve come to expect from LSHTM and epidemiology in general, the model forming the basis for this ‘expert’ claim is unscientific and contains severe problems, making its predictions worthless. Equally expected, the press ignores these issues and indeed gives the impression that they haven’t actually read the underlying paper at all.
The ‘paper’ was uploaded an hour ago as of writing, but I put the word paper in quotes because not only is this document not peer reviewed in any way, it’s not even a single document. Instead, it’s a file that claims it will be continually updated, yet which has no version numbers. This might make it tricky to talk about, as by the time you read this it’s possible the document will have changed. Fortunately, they’re uploading files via GitHub, meaning we can follow any future revisions that are uploaded here.
Errors
The first shortcoming of the ‘paper’ becomes apparent on page 1:
Due to a lack of data, we assume Omicron has the same severity as Delta.
In reality, there is data and so far it indicates that Omicron is much milder than Delta:
Early data from the Steve Biko and Tshwane District Hospital Complex in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, which is at the centre of the outbreak, showed that on December 2nd only nine of the 42 patients on the Covid ward, all of whom were unvaccinated, were being treated for the virus and were in need of oxygen. The remainder of the patients had tested positive but were asymptomatic and being treated for other conditions.
The pattern of milder disease in Pretoria is corroborated by data for the whole of Gauteng province. Eight per cent of Covid-positive hospital patients are being treated in intensive care units, down from 23% throughout the Delta wave, and just 2% are on ventilators, down from 11%.
Financial Times, December 7th
The LSHTM document claims to be accurate as of today, but just ignores the data available so far and replaces it with an assumption; one that lets them argue for more restrictions.
What kind of restrictions? The LSHTM modellers are big fans of mask wearing:
All scenarios considered assume a 7.5% reduction in transmission following the introduction of limited mask-wearing measures by the U.K. Government on November 30th 2021, which we assume lasts until April 30th 2022. This is in keeping with our previous estimates for the impact of increased mask-wearing on transmission.
I was curious how they arrived at this number given the abundant evidence that mask mandates have no impact at all (example one, example two). But no such luck – a reference at the end of the above paragraph points to this document, which doesn’t contain the word “mask” anywhere and “7.5%” likewise cannot be found. I wondered if maybe this was a typo but the claim that the relevant reference supports mask wearing appears several times and the word “mask” isn’t mentioned in references before or after either. (Correction: see below).
There are many other assumptions of dubious validity in this paper. I don’t have time today to try and list all of them, although maybe someone else wants to have a go. A few that jumped out on a quick read through are:
- An assumption that S gene drop-outs, i.e. cases where a PCR test doesn’t detect the spike protein gene at all, are always Omicron. That doesn’t follow logically given the very high number of mutations and given that theoretically PCR testing is very precise, meaning a missing S gene should be interpreted as “not Covid”. Of course, in reality – as is by now well known – PCR results are routinely presented in a have-cake-and-eat-it way, in which they’re claimed to be both highly precise but also capable of detecting viruses with near arbitrary levels of mutation, depending on what argument the user wishes to support.
- “We use the relationship between mean neutralisation titre and protective efficacy from Khoury et al. (7) to arrive at assumptions for vaccine efficacy against infection with Omicron” – The cited paper was published in May and has nothing to say on the topic of vaccine effectiveness against Omicron, which is advertised as being heavily mutated. Despite not citing any actual measured data on real-world vaccine effectiveness, the modelling team proceeds to make arguments for widespread boosting with a vaccine targeted at the original 2019 Wuhan version of SARS-CoV-2.
- They make scenarios that vary based on unmeasurable variables like “rate of introduction of Omicron”, making their predictions effectively unfalsifiable. Regardless of what happens, they can claim that they projected a scenario that anticipated it, and because such a rate is unknowable, nobody can prove otherwise. Predictions have to be falsifiable to be scientific, but these are not.
- Their conclusion says “These results suggest that the introduction of the Omicron B.1.1.529 variant in England will lead to a substantial increase in SARS-CoV-2 transmission” even though earlier in the ‘paper’ they say they assume anywhere between a 5%-10% lower transmissibility than Delta to 30%-50% higher (page 7), or in other words, they have no idea what the underlying difference in transmissibility is – and that’s assuming this is actually something that can be summed up in a single number to begin with.
Analysis
If you’re new to adversarial reviews of epidemiology papers some of the above points may seem nit-picky, or even made in bad faith. Take the problem of the citation error – does it really matter? Surely, it’s just some sort of obscure copy/paste error or typo?. Unfortunately, we cannot simply overlook such failures. (Correction: See below).
The reality is that academic output, especially in anything that involves statistical modelling, frequently turns out to not merely be unreliable but leaves the reader with the impression that the authors must have started with a desired conclusion and then worked backwards to try and find sciencey-sounding points to support it. Inconvenient data is claimed not to exist, convenient data is cherry picked, and where no convenient data can be found it’s just conjured into existence. Claims are made and cited but the citations don’t contain supporting evidence, or turn out to be just more assumptions. Every possible outcome is modelled and all but the most alarming are discarded. The scientific method is inconsistently used, at best, and instead scientism rules the day; meanwhile, universities applaud and defend this behaviour to the bitter end. Academia is in serious trouble: huge numbers of researchers just have no standards whatsoever and there are no institutional incentives to care.
Some readers will undoubtably wonder why we’re still bothering to do this kind of analysis given that there’s nothing really new here. On the Daily Sceptic alone we’ve covered these sorts of errors here, here, here, here, here and here – and that’s not even a comprehensive list. So why bother? I think it’s worth continuing to do this kind of work for a couple of reasons:
- Many people who didn’t doubt the science last year have developed newfound doubts this year, but won’t search through the archives to read old articles.
- The continued publication of these sorts of ‘papers’ is itself useful information. It shows that academia doesn’t seem to be capable of self-improvement and despite a long run of prediction failures, nobody within the institutions cares about the collective reputation of professors. The appearance of being scientific is what matters. Actually being scientific, not so much.
Correction
In the comments below user MTF points out a mistake in the article. The citation for mask wearing goes to a website with two documents with similar names. The primary document doesn’t talk about face masks, but the second supplementary document does mention them. It in turn cites two studies, this modelling study and this observational study in Bangladesh. These citations are not strong – the Bangladeshi study has criticised for not actually being a study of mask mandates, and it’s unclear if the results are even statistically significant. The modelling study states in the abstract that “We do not find evidence that mandating mask-wearing reduces transmission”, although they conclude that mask wearing itself (i.e. for reasons other than mandates) can reduce transmission. However, they find a different numbers to the cited 7.5%, which appears to come from the Bangladeshi study. This paper doesn’t seem to actually provide support for the cited claim, which is that the 7.5% reduction will come from the “introduce of limited mask wearing measures by the U.K. government”, i.e., mask mandates.
Nonetheless, my assertion that the cited document didn’t provide any support for the 7.5% mask figure was wrong – that’s embarrassing. In the software engineering world it’s become typical to handle publicly visible errors by writing a ‘post-mortem’ explaining what went wrong and what will be done in future to avoid it. That seems like a good practice to use for these articles too.
Firstly, what went wrong:
- Expectation bias. (The following paragraph appeared in the original article in a different place). The phenomenon of apparently random or outright deceptive citations is one I’ve written about previously. This problem is astoundingly widespread in academia. Most people will assume that a numerical claim by researchers that has a citation must have at least some level of truth to it, but in fact, meta-scientific study has indicated the error rate in citations is as high as 25%. A full quarter of scientific claims pointing to ‘evidence’ turn out when checked to be citing something that doesn’t support their point! This error rate feels roughly in line with my own experiences (not in all fields though!), and that’s why it’s always worth verifying citations for dubious claims.
In this case the prior evidence that mask mandates have no effect is very strong, and citations that don’t seem to support the cited claim are something I keep encountering in the health literature, so it seemed like a continuation of the pattern. - Failure to check for multiple kinds of problem. The citation is of a document titled “Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. LSHTM: autumn and winter scenarios 2021 to 2022”. The document with this title indeed contains no mention of masks, but the second document with a similar title does. I checked for typos in the reference numbers, but not ambiguity in the cited document, partly because I expected the correct document to be a dedicated study. In the event the citation is a citation-of-a-citation instead of a direct link to the actual papers they’re relying on.
- Insufficiently adversarial review. This is the first time (that we know of) that an article I’ve written contains a factual error. It is partly a consequence of my articles not being reviewed by other Daily Sceptic writers as carefully as they once were.
For my future articles here I’ll adopt the following new procedures:
- 48 hour publication delay. Potential problems often spring to mind after the first draft of an article is written and sent to others for review. In this case by the time I’d gone for a walk and done some shopping I was already developing doubts about this claim, and wondering if maybe the cited paper talked about masks under the term “face coverings” or in another way that I hadn’t noticed (as I didn’t read the full thing, just searched it to try and find the supporting evidence). Normally my articles are in a pending state for much longer than this one was, which went live almost immediately. An enforced waiting period gives time for conscious and sub-conscious reflection, and mostly what I write here isn’t time sensitive anyway – although this publication delay will only apply to me.
- Increasing the pool of reviewers. Although my articles are guest posts and thus are reviewed, most changes are only for house style. Clearly we could benefit from more aggressive peer review. Ideally I’d like MTF to review my articles pre-publication in future as he/she consistently finds the weaknesses in them before anyone else. Of course he/she may very justifiably not wish to volunteer for this sort of thing. If anyone else would like to help with this, please get in touch.
- Verification of apparently mis-linked citations with authors. In cases where a citation looks mis-directed I’ll ask the authors for a clarification or correction in future. I stopped doing this at some point because when asking about apparent problems with papers, the results have often been poor or non-existent, and in this case we still seem to have a citation that actually argues against the point being made re: mandates vs non-mandated wearing. Nonetheless, a citation that talks about something without supporting the point is different to one that doesn’t mention the point at all and the latter are more likely to either be errors in authorship or errors in detection.
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The fallacy that the planet and its climate exists for our sake, and that its current state is ‘optimal’ and deserving of our efforts to maintain it as such, demonstrates the height of human arrogance.
Do you mean the height of human ignorance
Both, I’d say.
.I find it odd that a bunch of committed environmentalists, who want to save trees, should aim at dropping CO2 to the ‘pre-industrial level’ of 280ppm.
Which will put a major strain on all plant life…
How major a strain?
Quote some facts on this.
Oh, about this much he said, holding his hands apart.
Never wondered why people pump co2 into their greenhouses/aquariums?
anyway, here you go:
There’s at least one tree on here suffering from a lack of CO2.
Don’t tell climate Genius Al Gore – it might be an ‘inconvenient truth’.
Apart from the ones that can no longer grow, due to drought etc.
And evidence please? Obviously you’ve got your deserts, semi-deserts, artic regions.
We all await an evidenced response.
Wrong as usual.
As CO2 levels rise trees require less water due to the stomata have to stay open for shorter periods so less water is lost.
I’m sure he’d be happy to, just following you posting your first fact ever on this site.
This site seems to be an inappropriate place for facts.
This site? I think you mean your brain.
With regard to climate science, it seems you wouldn’t recognise a fact if it bit you on your snout.
Plants consume CO2 when photosynthesising to generate energy to grow.
CO2 is plant food.
before life on earth the atmosphere was overwhelmingly composed of CO2, algae, plants and anything else that can photosynthesise changed the atmospheric composition over billions of years to the tiny amounts of co2 we have now.
you can google “early earth atmospheric composition” and find out for yourself.
I learnt about photosynthesis in infant school.
id consider knowledge of how plants make their energy to be elementary science, in the same league as adding water to something makes it wet.
not knowing that co2 is plant food is probably why the young are all get up about this.
”Fake invisible catastrophes and threats of doom” by Dr Patrick Moore.
There – have a read. That should inform you.
Twelve Teslas Queued Up For A Charge
https://rumble.com/vy6wei-twelve-teslas-queued-up-for-a-charge.html?
tonyheller
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It’s pretty obvious from the charts, that 250,000 years ago and every 100 thousand odd years before that, humans existed with a vast industrial polluting civilisation that caused their manmade climate warming and caused catastrophic events that wiped any traces of their existence off the face of the planet.
Any parent knows that ‘because I say its so’ is the mark of a lost argument.
Also if I might be so bold, can I mention that there is no money in telling the truth on this or many other subjects.
Off subject
Under the terms of the Online Safety Bill you are not allowed to tell anyone about the below article
‘Incredible’ teenager died from blood clot after receiving AstraZeneca Covid jab – North Wales Live (dailypost.co.uk)
I would like to know why her life doesn’t matter; why charges have not been brought.
I’m not even sure I believe there’s such a thing as ‘the climate’
There isn’t. It was a convenient term to describe regional weather variations to schoolchildren.
What alarmists mean when they refer to climate is temperature change, they are just too stupid to realise that.
They are ‘just too stupid’ – period. And they are not alone in this sad crowded little Island.
No CO2 connection – no need for net zero. Keep chipping away, Mr Morrison.
No point in chipping away… he’s only talking to a handful of deniers.
They are already on his side and there is no cogent argument put forward to deny the reality of climate change. Good enough for you lot, but not for sensible folks.
Which reality is that? the one represented by the first assessment by the IPCC, or the second, or the third …….. We are now on the sixth now and they still haven’t got it right. Good to know the science is settled.
Hello tree. CO2 is your food. More CO2, deserts shrink, record crops, fewer starve. Try https://notrickszone.com/2022/03/19/higher-co2-concentrations-mean-better-plant-water-use-enhanced-photosynthesis-expanding-sahel/
plenty more where that came from.
You’ve ended up on the wrong website again. Try http://www.bbc.co.uk – you’ll find all sorts of interesting news and lifestyle articles that will satisfy your need for establishment viewpoints. Wonderful recipes too, happy browsing!
Still waiting for one of you to make a cogent argument. Looks like it will be a long wait.
It’s http://www.bbc.co.uk; there’s a menu bar at the top where you can access all the main stories and the recipes are under Food. There’s Have Your Say too if you’re interested, you can share ideas with like-minded members of the public who I think will really enjoy your commentary.
Your hypothesis, it’s on you to provide evidence. That’s called science, by the way.
No one’s denying the reality of climate change we’re just questioning the claim that a) the anthropogenic signature has been detected b) that increased CO2 is the cause of global warming c) that a warming of the planet will end life as we know it. So Mr. Tree, what evidence have you got that you can share?
I don’t know a single person who denies the climate, or even that it’s changing.
Running round with your hair on fire screaming ‘we’re all doomed’ isn’t science.
Bring something meaningful to the conversation.
Is there anyone quite so blind and obtuse as this person “Tree” who will not acknowledge that there have been periods of much more intense warming and cooling long before man-made emissions? Carbon dioxide may play some small part today but current warming is nothing like we have had in the past. I have looked down from the hills above Harlech in North Wales and seen the remnants of terraces where vines grew freely during the Roman warm period. And, trudging through a rank and miserable bog above Machynlleth, I was amazed to be told by an archaeologist in our hiking party that we were standing in part of a pre-Roman kingdom, where digs had shown it was once a land flowing in milk and honey whose people created dazzling artefacts. “Tree”? He or she is barking up the wrong one. More to be pitied for blind ignorance than laughed at.for sheer folly.
Was anyone around to witness any of these very warm periods of time?
Were they trying to grow crops to feed billions of people.
Using excessive timeframe trends to argue against real trends now seems to be standard denier tactics. Doesn’t stop it being stupid.
You have confirmed to me that no one should take you seriously. You ask did anyone witness these warm periods of time. The vine terraces speak for themselves to anyone with half an ounce of common sense. It was t hot enough for people to grow grapes, for goodness sake. And of course I explained that archaeological digs have attested to the bogs above Machynlleth once having been rich agricultural land capable of supporting a vibrant culture. With people like your good self around it is no wonder we have had two years of dreadful collateral damage from the Covid lockdowns. The warming psychosis echoes the similar Covid fear, panic and blindness.
http://www.bbc.co.uk
I’m sure someone must have around in those days, though I’ve never met one. Should I then conclude that they didn’t exist?
Meanwhile, focussing obsessively on ridiculously short timeframe trends with no historical context seems to be standard alarmist tactics. Doesn’t stop it being stupid, though.
Take a look at the wholly unrealistic and clearly stupid temperature projection used by Al Gore.
Using miniscule timeframes is standard climate panicker tactics. Doesn’t stop it being stupid
You’ll find all sorts of sensible folks in the Have Your Say section on the BBC website. With your way with words, you’ll get tonnes of
Good luck!
Use of the word ‘denier’ betrays your ignorance of both science and reality.
Climate Change ….
Another attempt to deny the undeniable.
DS keeps doing coming up with this selective garbage and the readers just buy it.
They are duty bound to oppose anything that is an accepted truth.
So just publish a dodgy article and let their ignorance and preconceptions to the rest.
If you tilt the graph it can agree with your version of reality. It’s all the rage with the modelling community these days.
Your epistemological and psychoanalytical sense making is too advanced for us, tree
. What are we buying?
Try coming up with something yourself to convince us all the planet is warming catastrophically.
You see.. making things up isn’t for me.
You are pushing a large gas-bag of CO2 uphill!
Where are your objective facts and how do you differentiate them from your hysteria??
Look there are 30 such idiots with their downward thumbs.
The BBC has an excellent Climate Crisis section I think you’d really enjoy. Up to date reporting of the myriad impacts extreme weather is having around the world. Sobering stuff ..
Do you think you are funny?
You clearly think you’re clever, but I’ve seen no empirical evidence of that either.
Deny the undeniable.
Accepted truth.
I think the ignorance and preconconceptions are clearly yours.
Look up up logical fallacies, first formalised by Aristotle 2500 years ago.
Though I haven’t met him either, so he probably didn’t exist.
“don’t worry the next ice age in 50000 years should cool us down”
You know what they say, make hay while the sun shines.
Gates wants to block out the sun – the giver of life. – with dust
That fugures.
Gates: a truly evil being.
And this is why it’s vital that Nigel Farage and other leading figures opposing the carbon madness stop giving credence to the man-made CO2 threat.
AGW is the great deception employed by the Reset Gang to crush working and middle class oiks.
Agreed. Farage and Tice hit the easy target of Net Zero, but back away from disputing the “settled” science around CO2. Politics, eh.
Defeat NetZero and ‘climate change’ is defeated.
Get Johnson out of Number Ten and this increasingly rotten Tory Party is defeated!
Surprised that you would prefer Labour.
There is no such thing as ‘settled science’ or else the sun would still be going around the earth as a matter of “scientific fact”
F=MA
P=V^2/R
What’s wrong with these.
Got it in one!
I’m getting a strong feeling of deja vu with these climate articles. Even when preaching to the choir you might want to mix up the parables a bit.
Have you listened to the BBC or read the Guardian lately?
What politicians say: it’s vital that we massively reduce emissions.
What politicians do: spend 25 years rapidly increasing the population through mass immigration of people from countries where per capita emissions are much, often very, very much, lower. With Channel -crossers, people from Hong Kong, Ukrainians and “Ukrainians”, the current government seems determined to achieve new records.
British passport holders from Hong Kong, of which there are many, by definition, are British and entitled to come here.
BBC, 1 February 2021
“British National Overseas (BNO) citizenship is a type of British nationality created in 1985 that people in Hong Kong could apply for before the 1997 handover to China to retain a link with the UK.
The lifelong status, which cannot be passed down to family members, did not give holders any special rights.
It meant only they could visit the UK for six months without a visa.
But the new system, in place from 31 January 2021, allows these BNO citizens and their close family to apply for two periods of five years to live and work in the UK.
After the first five years, they are able to choose to apply for indefinite leave to remain, which means an individual can live and work without applying for a visa.
And after one year of this status, individuals are able to apply for British citizenship.”
That’s just your racism talking.
That’s just your drooling imbecility talking.
Bad News, everyone.
I remember watching this lawyer testify to Reiner Fuellmich’s Coronavirus Committee.
She has been arrested
One of the attorneys assisting Reiner Fuelmich in proving world leaders have committed crimes against humanity in the name of Covid-19, has been arrested in France on suspicion of terrorism and treason.
Virginie de Araujo Recchia, a French attorney living in France who is participating in the work of the Citizen Jury with Reiner Fuellmich, was arrested in her home at dawn on March 22nd in front of her children. The arrest comes three weeks before ahead of the French presidential elections.
Fuellmich’s team have allegedly been informed the charges involve counterterrorism and possibly treason
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/24/fuelmich-lawyer-arrested-treason-for-exposing-covid-fraud/
https://www.conspiracywatch.info/virginie-de-araujo-recchia
https://archive.ph/Ed8es
An interesting article, thank you. It’s such a shame our cloth-eared, brain-dead political leaders ignore facts and science and make policy on the advice of soothsayers.
A sigh of Relief At last British joins lists are being red pilled and finding the courage ( the balls ) to write the truth about this climate fraud , the likes of pierce Corbyn, Vernon Coleman & Tony Heller has been saying this for donkeys ( forgive the spelling ) .
Yet another dismissal of the climate change scam. However, one of the main benefits to the globalists and their minions, such as Boris, is to impoverish normal people whilst building their own wealth and exercising a truly Orwellian level of control over us. We are at war with them and we simply have to win, whatever it takes, for the benefit of our descendants. Of course “climate change” is only one of their weapons…
Those four glacials/interglacials. Turning points top and bottom roughly align. Some sort of natural governor at work. Overlay CO2, and it peaked at, what, 280ppm? Not much doom-loop runaway catastrophic global warming climate change. And now CO2 is over 400ppm, shouldn’t temperature be off the scale?
It’s logical that there is a natural relationship between the two, in as much as when it’s really frozen, the number of plants that extract CO2 is bound to be lower. Apart from the temperature and lack of available water, low carbon levels in the air would also inhibit the growth of plants. A bit like turning down the heat and slowing the clock, as it were.
Chris, excellent acerbic piece, with a great counter-riposte at the end.
There are plots of (estimated) temperature going back 500m years, also showing CO2, proving that rises and CO2 are never tethered, the latter mechanistically driving the former – as we are currently forced to believe.
I was very depressed to watch Steve Baker on a video saying that the chance to counter the narrative that “carbon” is responsible for rising temperature, and that a minute rise in one inevitably meant a rise in the other, was lost. That train has left the station he said.
Thank for your generous comment. It’s the same with Farage and Tice. They want a Net Zero referendum but seem to accept that we need to reduce CO2 emissions. You can’t have both, since Net Zero is a logical solution if you think the planet faces an existential threat from CO2. It’s just politicians playing their usual games.