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Too Much Faith in Models
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.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Bankrupting America
Bankrupting America
Source: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump signed the largest stimulus bill in U.S. history: more than $2 trillion.
For once, both Republicans and Democrats agreed. The Senate voted 96-0. The House didn’t even bother with a formal vote.
At the White House, a reporter asked the president, pointing out that the bill includes $25 million for the Kennedy Center, “Shouldn’t that money be going to masks?”
“The Kennedy Center has suffered greatly because nobody can go there,” Trump responded. “They do need some funding. And look — that was a Democrat request. That was not my request. But you got to give them something.”
“Something” they got. The bill includes $25 million for Congressional salaries, $50 million for an Institute of Museum and Library Services and lots of other wasteful things.
Only a few politicians were wary. Rep. Thomas Massie complained that he wasn’t even allowed to speak against the bill.
Rep. Alex Mooney asked: “How do you pay for it? Borrow it from China, borrow it from Russia? Are we going to print the money?”
Those are good questions.
Our national debt is already $24 trillion. Now it will jump, percentage-wise, to where Greece’s debt was shortly before unemployment there hit 27%.
Greece was bailed out by the European Union. But the United States can’t be bailed out by others.
How will we pay off our debt? That’s the topic of my new video.
There are really three options:
1. Raise taxes.
2. Print money.
3. Default.
Let’s consider each:
1. Raising taxes on rich people is popular. Even Michael Bloomberg wants “higher taxes on billionaires” like him.
But raising taxes on the rich often kills the wealth and jobs some rich people create. And it won’t solve our debt problem. Even if we took all the billionaires’ wealth — reducing their net worth to zero — it would cover only an eighth of our debt.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
