Too Much Faith in Models
Source: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Between 2 million and 3 million Americans will die!
That was the prediction from “experts” at London’s Imperial College when COVID-19 began. They did also say if there was “social distancing of the whole population,” the death toll could be cut in half, but 1.1 million to 1.46 million Americans would still die by this summer.
Our actual death toll has been about one-tenth of that.
Nevertheless, Imperial College’s model was extremely influential.
Politicians issued stay-at-home orders. They said we must trust the “experts.”
“Follow the science. Listen to the experts. Do what they tell you,” said Joe Biden, laughing at what he considered an obvious truth.
But “there is no such thing as “the science!” replies science reporter Matt Ridley in my new video about “expert” predictions. “Science consists of people disagreeing with each other!”
The lockdowns, he adds, were “quite dangerously wrong.”
Because Imperial’s model predicted that COVID-19 would overwhelm hospitals, patients were moved to nursing homes. The coronavirus then spread in nursing homes.CARTOONS | STEVE BREENVIEW CARTOON
Ordering almost every worker to stay home led to an economic collapse that may have killed people, too.
“The main interventions that helped prevent people dying were stopping large gatherings, people washing their hands and wearing face masks, general social distancing — not forcing people to stay home,” says Ridley.
Even New York Governor Andrew Cuomo now admits: “We all failed at that business. All the early national experts: ‘Here’s my projection model.’ They were all wrong.”
If he and other politicians had just done just a little research, then they would have known that Imperial College researchers repeatedly predict great disasters that don’t happen. Their model predicted 65,000 deaths from swine flu, 136,000 from mad cow disease, and 200 million from bird flu.
The real numbers were in the hundreds.
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