Coronavirus - Part Two.

[Mister M]

This article from the BMJ offers an interesting perspective on COVID -19 death numbers

David Oliver: Mistruths and misunderstandings about covid-19 death numbers | The BMJ

 

[apelike]

1 hour ago, butlers said:

It's funny the " Fergusson skeptics" can never account for why if he's been so off in every estimate since the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic  that he still advises the UK ,US governments ,the EU and the World Health Organization.

 

Classic case of shooting the messenger

Not really shooting the messenger though is it. It was him that wrote the code that he uses in his modelling and that was written to model any future flu pandemic. Not sure if he still advised the UK government either since he had to resign for breaching covid rules so he could see his lover. It may also be the case that because none of his past pandemic prediction were anywhere near accurate government then decided to be cautious in how they handled the covid one.

[Carbuncle]

3 hours ago, the_bloke said:

4 hours ago, Carbuncle said:

Good so we agree ... the 1.6% and 800 death figures are unreliable. Discharges from hospitals to care homes without a negative test result put care home residents at risk but we do not have a good indication of just how many deaths it caused.

They are reliable; they are the numbers of people who had been in hospital then discharged into a care home who had a positive test. The other %age part of the figures is also reliable, as it's the numbers of people who hadn't been in hospital but died with a positive test.

 

The unreliability is how many people were infected or died of Covid without having a positive test result.

If somebody infected with SARS-CoV-2 was discharged from hospital to a care home where they infected others leading to deaths but the dischargee was never themselves never tested then the deaths will not appear as part of the 1.6% .  Hence massive undercounting because most of the dischargees were never tested when they got back to the care home at least not in the early part of the pandemic.

[butlers]

My understanding was he offered to resign ,I can find no reference to it being accepted.

Also are there not 4 sets of modellers within the SAGE group?

 

[Carbuncle]

5 hours ago, apelike said:

It may also be the case that because none of his past pandemic prediction were anywhere near accurate government then decided to be cautious in how they handled the covid one

I think you are being a bit harsh. He has in fact predicted seven of the last one pandemics.

[apelike]

1 hour ago, butlers said:

My understanding was he offered to resign ,I can find no reference to it being accepted.

Also are there not 4 sets of modellers within the SAGE group?

Not sure about the latter but here is some info on him resigning as it was widely reported at the time.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52553229

 

1 hour ago, Carbuncle said:

I think you are being a bit harsh. He has in fact predicted seven of the last one pandemics.

As far as I am aware he does not and has not predict any pandemics. What he does is use mathematical models to try and predict the possible consequences of a pandemic and the likely mortality rate etc and then gives advice. The problem being he has given the worst case scenarios for past possible pandemics and has in nearly all cases been extremely wide of the mark.  

 

 

[Guest makapaka]

Never has there been so many experts on a pandemic.

 

the government were and are useless.

 

but it is what is now.

 

use your noodle - get a vaccine - stop reading the news.

 

only way out of all this hideousness.

 

 

[butlers]

The Press do us a disservice.

In all the pandemic work there is a range of outcomes and they only ever care to report the highest number  without it's context.

 

[Carbuncle]

13 minutes ago, butlers said:

The Press do us a disservice.

In all the pandemic work there is a range of outcomes and they only ever care to report the highest number  without it's context.

Exactly. Neither the news media nor the government have any strength in science. At one point I started working back through the Science ministers ... trying to find one of them who had studied science at university. I gave up before finding one. MPs do not generally have backgrounds in science. The BBC is short of science qualified reporters too, for example the BBC's head of science is David Shukman who studied geography at university. They just don't get it.

[Guest sibon]

28 minutes ago, Carbuncle said:

Exactly. Neither the news media nor the government have any strength in science. At one point I started working back through the Science ministers ... trying to find one of them who had studied science at university. I gave up before finding one. MPs do not generally have backgrounds in science. The BBC is short of science qualified reporters too, for example the BBC's head of science is David Shukman who studied geography at university. They just don't get it.

Got it in one.

 

All of these wise guys on here, decrying Neil Ferguson can go on the list too.

 

Numeracy is in short supply in our society. Anyone reporting an interval of certainty is likely to be unfairly dismissed as inaccurate. 
 

And don’t forget that forecasts usually trigger responses. Those responses often render the forecasts as inaccurate. That’s a good thing.

 

Ferguson has a formidable array of qualifications. I’d side with him over our resident keyboard dissidents any day.