Reopen the counties - the COVID-19 Edgy thread

Tbh, you will always find studies to back up your point of view on covid19. There are too many unknowns imho.

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Why does this expert want everyone to die?

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We all die.

Some never live.

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Everyone looking for their 15 minutes out of this one

This is true but it does appear as though ICU and deaths peaked in most countries before harder restrictions really would have seen an impact.

I think the only answer is herd immunity. We seem to have no idea on how to achieve this.

Given its a virus, would the improved weather be having an impact on these numbers?

Run a few more Cheltenham festivals this year.

There are strong indicators that sunlight helps this.

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Getting messy in Limerick

Police baton-charged hundreds of people who had flocked to liquor shops when they opened on Monday for the first time in a relaxation of the world’s biggest lockdown, which is set to run until 17 May.

Government issued yokes and a massive rave in the Phoenix park. Spread the disease from all the hugging and kissing.

They came call it coming up with the Phoenix or something

For anyone with the inclination to read into it, the corruption at play is mesmerising, and Ferguson appears to be in the middle of it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6

Here are a few key quotes from the Nature article:

…it’s natural to wonder how reliable any of the simulations are. Unfortunately, during a pandemic it is hard to get data - such as on infection rates - against which to judge a model’s projections.

‘You can project forwards and then compare against what you get. But the problem is that our surveillance systems are pretty rubbish’, says John Edmunds, who is a modeller at the LSHTM [London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine]. ‘The total numbers of cases reported, is that accurate? No. Accurate anywhere? No’.

‘Forecasts made during an outbreak are rarely investigated during or after the event for their accuracy, and only recently have forecasters begun to make results, code, models and data available for retrospective analysis,’ Edmunds and his team noted last year in a paper that assessed the performance of forecasts made in a 2014-15 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. They found that it was possible to reliably predict the epidemic’s course one or two weeks ahead of time, but no longer, because of the inherent uncertainty and lack of knowledge about the outbreak.

The 16 March simulations that the [Neil Ferguson] team ran to inform the UK government’s COVID-19 response used an agent-based model built in 2005 to see what would happen in Thailand if H5N1 avian flu mutated to a version that could spread easily between people.

The last section is bolded for good reason. 5 days ago, I posted an article from Business Insider on Neil Ferguson (Reopen the counties - the COVID-19 Edgy thread).

Here is the key quote:

Similarly, he was accused of creating panic by overestimating the potential death toll during the 2005 Bird Flu outbreak. Ferguson estimated 200 million could die. The real number was in the low hundreds.

So, this is the underlying model Ferguson has used to project deaths from COVID-19. The guy is a charlatan, albeit a well-funded one with friends in very high places. It’s a disgrace that so many countries have been locked down based on a failed model by a guy with a track record that is questionable at best. He’ll get away with it too, because, his model is a black box and it hasn’t been and won’t be properly interrogated.

Real-time forecasts based on mathematical models can inform critical decision-making during infectious disease outbreaks. Yet, epidemic forecasts are rarely evaluated during or after the event, and there is little guidance on the best metrics for assessment.

Most viruses don’t do well in summer

People will never trust a scientist again

Sure, how could you?

Just going on this- I’m assuming Sweden should be up around the “moderate” level?

Back in April the doomsday merchants were predicting Sweden would implode, but that was based on how it was tracking against the fraudster’s model.

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Their daily ICU admissions and deaths are falling all the time. Seems to be very similar to here, a huge spike in care homes and then a fall in society at large. I wonder how accurate this really is?

How can they accurately say what the R rate was when the UK tested SFA people in March and they weren’t accurately reporting deaths?

Averaged across all countries, we estimate initial reproduction numbers of around 3.87 [3.01-4.66],
which is in line with other estimates.
1,8 These estimates are informed by our choice of serial interval
distribution and the initial growth rate of observed deaths. A shorter assumed serial interval results in
lower starting reproduction numbers (Appendix 8.4.2, Appendix 8.4.6). The initial reproduction
numbers are also uncertain due to (a) importation being the dominant source of new infections early
in the epidemic, rather than local transmission (b) possible under-ascertainment in deaths particularly
before testing became widespread.

There is going to be a lot of effort to “prove” the effectiveness of severe lockdowns.

Give it two weeks and Sweden won’t exist anymore though

Are we saying its fizzling out so?

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