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> those expert epidemiologists didn't do much better. How did you arrive at this assessment? I've been following this since the end of January, and every exper

by 13415 6y ago

> those expert epidemiologists didn't do much better. How did you arrive at this assessment? I've been following this since the end of January, and every expert I've heard gave sound and very good advise based on the available evidence at that time. Some of them might have made some disputable trade-offs, for example the Swedish lead epidemiologist, but overall there was a lot of agreement and the recommendations were excellent. Okay, maybe there are a few outlier countries like the US and Brazil where there might have been political muddling of the expert messages. Be that as it may, in general the advice from experts was not only good, most countries also succeeded in controlling the spread of the virus based on it. (And not every country needs to implement the same measures to be successful in that, it's more about a mix that works in that country.)

beagle3 6y ago
Those experts at the WHO predicted, in March, that if Sweden does not enforce a lockdown as recommended by the WHO, it will have 96,000 deaths on 1-July. The non-expert Michael Levitt, predicted at the same time, by fitting 3 parameters of a Gompertz distribution (And no other knowledge), that Sweden will have 5000 deaths on 1-July if things continue as they were when he made the prediction (that is, no WHO recommended lockdown). I'll leave it to you to lookup the Swedish death count on 1-July to see if the expert epidemiologists from the WHO had a better idea than non-expert Levitt. (But I'll give you a hint: It is mid september, and Sweden has ~6000 deaths).
- 13415 6y ago
  Nonsense, and also irrelevant. You're picking out one predictive model that got it wrong. I'd like to see this model, by the way. I've seen numerous models that got it right, and in any case I was talking about the advice experts gave. Nobody doubts that Sweden's death toll would be much lower if they had done a lockdown like almost every other country. In fact, the Swedish lead epidemiologist admitted that mistakes were made and that they failed to protect the elderly. The WHO advice was much better than what Swedish advisors came up with. Besides that, I was not talking about WHO experts but about experts in general. Every country has them, and they supply the data to WHO. Last but not least, you cannot evaluate a model on the basis of a singular prediction.

by 13415 6y ago

beagle3 6y ago

Those experts at the WHO predicted, in March, that if Sweden does not enforce a lockdown as recommended by the WHO, it will have 96,000 deaths on 1-July. The non-expert Michael Levitt, predicted at the same time, by fitting 3 parameters of a Gompertz distribution (And no other knowledge), that Sweden will have 5000 deaths on 1-July if things continue as they were when he made the prediction (that is, no WHO recommended lockdown). I'll leave it to you to lookup the Swedish death count on 1-July to see if the expert epidemiologists from the WHO had a better idea than non-expert Levitt. (But I'll give you a hint: It is mid september, and Sweden has ~6000 deaths).

13415 6y ago
Nonsense, and also irrelevant. You're picking out one predictive model that got it wrong. I'd like to see this model, by the way. I've seen numerous models that got it right, and in any case I was talking about the advice experts gave. Nobody doubts that Sweden's death toll would be much lower if they had done a lockdown like almost every other country. In fact, the Swedish lead epidemiologist admitted that mistakes were made and that they failed to protect the elderly. The WHO advice was much better than what Swedish advisors came up with. Besides that, I was not talking about WHO experts but about experts in general. Every country has them, and they supply the data to WHO. Last but not least, you cannot evaluate a model on the basis of a singular prediction.