3 ms·
This is bullshit. As but one example of the guy’s cluelessness: the curve of (new) infections over time is not a bell curve. The shape is roughly similar. But i
by IAmEveryone 7y ago
This is bullshit. As but one example of the guy’s cluelessness: the curve of (new) infections over time is not a bell curve. The shape is roughly similar. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the normal distribution.
- AuthorizedCust 7y agoIf that is your only criticism, you may be throwing away a whole article over a typo. The virus caseload in China is looking bell curve-ish. I am not on board with everything in this article, though. I am unsure about his proposition on reopening schools, for example. But I'm not throwing it all away over that one part.
- sgt101 7y agoMaybe you should because the fella has demonstrated sloppiness and ignorance on one issue, and that shakes my faith in the quality of the rest of it. If you are going to attempt to influence life and death policy you better be good. Compare the quality of this article to the Imperial College report last week.
- sgt101 7y agoThis fella goes to town on the nonsense in the GP : https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1241549349999411201 https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1241549349999411201
- IAmEveryone 7y agoIt’s not a typo. It’s the equivalent of mixing up Java and JavaScript.
- neonate 7y agoFarr's Law says otherwise: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22farr%27s+law%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22farr%27s+law%22.
- IAmEveryone 7y ago“ In the mid-19th century, Dr. William Farr made the observation that epidemic events rise and fall in a roughly symmetrical pattern that can be approximated by a bell-shaped curve. ” Yes, he got as Farr as noticing that it’s roughly bell-shaped. But just because it goes up and then down it’s not actually a normal distribution. At the beginning, when no one is immune, infections obviously grow exponentially. But the bell curve, even though it looks similar (sigmoid) doesn’t rise exponentially. So it looks similar, but it’s not. If you observe infections and somehow try to fit a normal distribution, you’ll get widely wrong predictions, especially at the beginning. Farr came up with this in 1840. That’s before Pasteur formulated germ theory as we know it today, so it was probably close enough for its time. Today it’s not.
- IAmEveryone 7y agoOh, also: try to fit a bell curve on the AIDS epidemic and see how “Farr” you get.