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The Flu (Health)
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Doh! It Just Gets Worse (part 1)

Mick Harper wrote:
They're doing the best they can with their tiny brains.


Sadly, their tiny brains have been heavily overloaded by the sheer pace of events, and in all the excitement, any memory of previous fiascos has been quickly forgotten.

I refer my honourable colleagues to:

Use and abuse of mathematical models: an illustration from the 2001 foot and mouth disease epidemic in the United Kingdom

Ref: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8951/e59ad3931dce8dbfd8cda6cb96f0663afefb.pdf

What's it all about then?

2011 paper by Mansley et al about the UK Government’s heavily-criticised response to Food and Mouth Disease (FMD) in 2001 which, needless to say, was influenced by one of Ferguson’s computer simulations.


Oh, not him again?

The mathematical models were, at best, crude estimations that could not differentiate risk between farms and, at worst, inaccurate representations of the epidemiology of FMD. Ultimately, the models neither correctly predicted the course and duration of the epidemic nor the effectiveness of the traditional control measures put in place nor the novel ones proposed. Thus, they failed the acid tests of refutedness, testedness and usefulness.


But, but, surely something is better than nothing?

The rush to embrace non-validated mathematical models in policy-making, presented without balancing their apparent numerical certainty against the degree of improbable biological assumptions they contained, resulted in traditional methods proven by generations of veterinarians being neglected. As Kitching et al put it [in the summary of their 2006 paper]: “The UK experience provides a salutary warning of how models can be abused in the interest of scientific opportunism.”


Sometimes, when you've got nothing, you know what you've got. Using "non-validated mathematical models" is like picking a map at random from the shelf full of maps in WH Smiths, and convincing yourself any map is better than no map.
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Mick Harper
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As I recall, the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak involved the slaughter of (something like) ten times more animals than any other foot-and-mouth outbreak ever. Which I found surprising at the time but it was explained as what happens when live exports of animals (at the insistence of the French and other ne'er-do-wells who wanted to claim their meat was 'home-slaughtered') meant animals were motoring up and down the motorways like Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch in their prime. I nodded sagely (no pun intended).

Then I heard it was ten times the number of animals that had ever been slaughtered in any European foot-and-mouth outbreak, and I did start to wonder. Don't they have any motorways? If it all turns out to have been caused by an Imperial College computer malfunction -- an Imperial College computer operator malfunction. -- I will be quite cross with myself for accepting the official story just because it appealed to my prejudices.
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Boreades


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Doh! It Just Gets Worse (part 2)

Johan Giesecke, the former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has called Ferguson’s model “the most influential scientific paper” in memory.

Makes you proud to be British?

He also says it was, sadly, “one of the most wrong.”

Oh. Makes you sick to be British. People are lining up to put the boot in while he's down.

Elon Musk calls Ferguson an “utter tool” who does “absurdly fake science.” Jay Schnitzer, an expert in vascular biology and a former scientific direct of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in San Diego, tells me: “I’m normally reluctant to say this about a scientist, but he dances on the edge of being a publicity-seeking charlatan.”

Harsh. But at least he gets a snappy rhyming by-line.

Ferguson has been wrong so often that some of his fellow modelers call him “The Master of Disaster.”

Other folks are starting to notice “The Master of Disaster”'s track record.

2001
Ferguson was behind the disputed research that sparked the mass culling of eleven million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.


2002
Ferguson predicted that up to 150,000 people could die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from BSE.


2005
Ferguson said that up to 200 million people could be killed from bird flu. He told the Guardian that ‘around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak… There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably.’ In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.


2009
a government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a “reasonable worst-case scenario” was that the swine flu would lead to 65,000 British deaths. In the end, swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K.

Etcetera.

Usually, it's a case of an expert helping the police to lock up a serial offender. Not sure what one does when it's the expert that's the serial offender.
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Mick Harper
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This is an unusual application of AE's Tyranny of Large Numbers which operates like this

1. Somebody puts out a large but at the time not known number for some event, say 'Russian war dead'.
1 (A) Occasionally, very occasionally, this is opposed and a smaller number is proposed and accepted.
2. Everyone goes with 1 or 1 (A) until somebody comes out with a larger number.
3. There is a choice. The larger number is more newsworthy; the smaller one may show callousness toward the dead. (2) replaces (1)
4. This can go on indefinitely. There are generally (a) parties with an interest in pushing numbers up (victims etc), there are rarely (b) ones with an interest in pushing it down (persecutors etc).
5. Gradually there are no 'experts in the field' save those from (a).
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Mick Harper
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Further to Borry on Bring Me Sunshine, sunshine. We have all had a crash course in death policy over the last few months and it has come as a surprise (to me) how weirdly arbitrary it all is. When I heard the statistic about 50% of old people not surviving ventilators I started to rethink. I am pretty sure they haven't done blind trials to find out how many would survive without ventilator treatment. Mainly because none of them would get on ventilators in the first place in normal times since ICU's are far too scarce and far too expensive to treat the likes of them for anything.

Al -Jazeera ran a piece about policy in Holland where, in a voice of disapproval, it was explained they have a much looser attitude to euthanasia. And have far fewer ICU units than we do at the best of times. Cut to elderly couple. "I don't think they'll be bothering with me somehow," said the woman (who had been in and out of hospital) quite philosophically. "I'm not ready to go yet," said the husband, quite philosophically.
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Boreades


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The Strange Case of No Cases of Coronavirus in Under-10 Children

I've been rather astonished to read this:

A review of paediatric coronavirus evidence revealed 'the China/WHO joint commission could not recall episodes during contact tracing where transmission occurred from a child to an adult.'

Researchers have also failed to uncover any cases of children under the age of 10 transmitting the virus, which has killed more than 26,000 people in the UK.

Studies into the impact of coronavirus on children also found it likely youngsters 'do not play a significant role' in transmission of the virus, although experts admitted the facts are still 'unclear'.


What are they saying? Is it really true that Under-10's aren't getting Coronavirus? Or do they mean they get it but are never contagious?

It flies in the face of everything we've experienced with our children when they were Under-10's. They brought home every damn contagious thing going. From conjuntivitus, to mumps, whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, smallpox, anthrax, black death... you name it, they got it, brought it home, and gave it to us.
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Mick Harper
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If true, this certainly finishes the germ theory of disease once and for all. Unless something happened ten years ago. It would have to be worldwide -- maybe a burst of the sun's surface radiation (isn't that called the corona or something?). I'm ruling out a Midwich Cuckoo scenario though kids have been getting awfully strange lately. Always stuck in front of their computers. It's as if they wanted a lockdown. Or at any rate their viruses did.
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Boreades


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I might have been a bit excessive when I mentioned Anthrax and Black Death. The latter might have been because of a "Covid cardiologist at a top London hospital" who is in the news.

This "Covid cardiologist" says:

Basically, every mistake that could have been made, was made.


Like what?

He likened the care home policy to the Siege of Caffa in 1346, that grim chapter of the Black Death when a Mongol army catapulted plague-ridden bodies over the walls.


What walls?

“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did. We discharged known, suspected, and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared, with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.


Oh, Care Home walls.

“We let these people die without palliation. The official policy was not to visit care homes – and they didn’t (and still don’t). So, after infecting them with a disease that causes an unpleasant ending, we denied our elders access to a doctor – denied GP visits – and denied admission to hospital. Simple things like fluids, withheld. Effective palliation like syringe drivers, withheld.”

Is this extremist or alarmist? I can't tell. The BBC has been quick to show videos of carers in Care Homes, with lots of PPE.

Ventilators are getting more attention.

The overuse of ventilators was itself killing people at a terrifying ratio and behind that lies another institutional failure. “When the inquiry comes, it will show that many people died for lack of oxygen supply in hospitals, and this led to early intubation,” writes the doctor. “Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”

Is there something wrong with the ventilators? Or is it just that high flow oxygen is more effective?

Bring Out Your Dead

Here's one. I'm not dead. What? Nothing, here's your ninepence. I'm not dead. Here, he says he's not dead. Well, he will be soon, he's very ill. I'm getting better! No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs
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Boreades


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Boreades wrote:
it's not been in the "public interest" for the UK and others to point the finger at Chinese biotech labs and accidental leaks. As that might remind our public how many accidental leaks there have been of hazardous &/or contagious materials from various UK labs.

Why worry about bioterrorism when biomuppetry happens far more frequently?


Here's one they prepared earlier (New Scientist, 7 September 2007)

A faulty drainage pipe was the most likely source of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Britain on 3 August, official investigators concluded today.

Note the use of the phrase "drainage pipe", as in most people's minds that immediately invokes an image of something like a drainpipe from the roof.

The pipe connected two world class research facilities on the same Pirbright facility in Surrey. One, Merial Animal Health, is a manufacturer of foot and mouth and other animal vaccines. The second, the Institute of Animal Health (IAH), is the world’s foremost reference laboratory for identifying and monitoring outbreaks of foot and mouth.

Oh, not a drainpipe from a roof then.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has revealed that the two labs spent years haggling over who should pay for replacement of the ageing pipework, which now looks likely to have allowed the virus to escape.

Like two neighbours bickering over who should mend the fence.

Heavy rains in July probably overwhelmed the drainage system, washing live virus into the open through poorly sealed drain covers, concludes the HSE.

So it leaked out.

Lorries owned by contractors working on the Pirbright site probably picked up the mud-borne virus on their wheels and left traces of it on a road adjacent to the farm where the first of the two cases identified was confirmed on 3 August.

And then got distributed.

Early identification of the virus from the infected animal demonstrated that the offending strain – O1BFS – can only have come from Pirbright, where it was being used both by Merial and by the IAH. But the precise source of the virus remains unknown. “We were unable to discriminate between the Merial and IAH sources,” says Geoffrey Podger, chief executive of the HSE.

No name, no blame? And yet...

The HSE says that although Merial was producing 12000 litres of the virus at the time of the incident, compared with experiments using just millilitre-scale amounts at the IAH, it isn’t possible to say with certainty that the virus originated from Merial.

Yeah, right. That makes the odds 12,000 to 0.001 (12 million to one) that it did leak from just one place.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12615-faulty-pipe-blamed-for-uk-foot-and-mouth-outbreak/
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Mick Harper
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Six million cows and sheep cry out for justice.
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Boreades


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Good news chaps!

UK Government confirms that Covid19 is harmless to the great majority of people.

Downing Street Corona Briefing on May 11th, Chris Whitty - the UK's Chief Medical Officer - says that, to most people, the coronavirus is entirely harmless. ... Most people, a significant proportion of people, will not get this virus at all, at any point of the epidemic which is going to go on for a long period of time.

Some never get it or get no symptoms at all, or it's so mild they don't even notice it. For some, the symptoms are the same as a mild hangover. Of those with symptoms, 80% mild or moderate, not bad enough to go to doctor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adj8MCsZKlg

Much fuss in some of the MSM about how "confusing" the latest guidance is.

It may simply be because the guidance is in an inevitable state of transition. From the earlier "OMG! Professor Ferguson says we're all doomed!", through the crucial SAGE committee meeting when they realised Ferguson had been peddling random-science and they'd backed the wrong horse (or had been sold a pup), onto the less hysterical "Righteo chaps, time to start switching horses in mid-channel".

Do you think many people will notice?
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Boreades


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Some more of the hysteria in the MSM has been about the dangers of "second waves" of cases. As though relaxing lockdowns was the cause of the second waves. Something was nagging at the back of mind about that, and I think I may have found it.

The 1968 flu pandemic (Hong Kong flu)

By the end of December the virus had spread throughout the United States and had reached the United Kingdom and countries in western Europe. Australia, Japan, and multiple countries in Africa, eastern Europe, and Central and South America were also affected.


Sounds familiar.

The pandemic occurred in two waves, and in most places the second wave caused a greater number of deaths than the first wave.

No lockdown back then, so why was a second wave worse? Could it be "normal" flu behaviour?

By the way:

The H3N2 virus that caused the 1968 pandemic is still in circulation today and is considered to be a strain of seasonal influenza.


In the 1990s a closely related H3N2 virus was isolated from pigs. Scientists suspect that the human H3N2 virus jumped to pigs; infected animals may show symptoms of swine flu.


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Mick Harper
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Further to your piece about the immunity of children, the Guardian today ran a big cartoon showing a Covid/Death figure acting as a lollipop lady across the street from 'Holy Innocents Infants School'. But then you have to remember that the majority of Guardian readers are teachers and the majority of teachers are Guardian readers. With any luck the pandemics and the holidays will soon be running into one another. With even more luck this means we can get rid of teachers. Children I can take or leave alone. Though that's not how the court order sees it.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The Lockdown Skeptics https://lockdownsceptics.org/ have reviewed the computer codes behind Imperial's model.

It is not simple and obvious.

It is a mess. They had to review a derivative model, as Imperial won't provide the original 15000 line file. The derivative model, with recent fixes, was still full of bugs. It produces different results from the same inputs (not on purpose, ie it is not Monte Carlo, random game playing).

Still they plan to put it right......


“For me the code is not a mess, but it’s all in my head, completely undocumented. Nobody would be able to use it . . . and I don’t have the bandwidth to support individual users.”

I am pretty suspicious as, if Wiley puts forward ideas that ain't simple and obvious, Ishmael beats me to a pulp. You need more than fancy formula.

This is not to say that they, Imperial, are not right or that they are brilliant scientists who hold important opinions. It is to say that the research programme was using computer coding that wasn't fit for purpose, well, at least according to Lockdown skeptics.
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Grant



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The real cause of this hysteria is that over the last thirty years we have funded various medical bodies and told them: here's money - now protect us. These bodies have been desperately bigging up pandemics ever since.

Remember Bird flu, and Sars and Edwina Currie's egg ban, and foot and mouth, and Ebola.... It's no wonder they massively over-reacted when the latest flu bug left China.

The long term solution is to defund WHO, and Imperial, and every university which employs an epidemiology "expert"
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