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I have been following Dr. Levitt since the beginning of the pandemic, and I have now count loss of how many of his predictions turned out to be wrong. Also he n

by nafizh 6y ago

I have been following Dr. Levitt since the beginning of the pandemic, and I have now count loss of how many of his predictions turned out to be wrong. Also he never fleshes out how he is doing his calculations. At this point, any reasonable person with some self-reflection would just shut up.

xhkkffbf 6y ago
There's plenty of "wrong" to go around. Nick Kristoff at the NYT predicted we might have more than 1m deaths by the end of the summer. In the US. But he's not shutting up. And gosh, Neil Ferguson, the famous epidemiologist in England keeps coming up with predictions based on the thinnest amount of data. Yet he's not shutting up. I think everyone who is devoting any time to shutting down or shutting up someone else would be better served spending the time generating better data. Censorship is a terrible impulse.
- dumborlying 6y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coronavirus-trump-response.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coron... Given that the 1M prediction was with no intervention, and interventions happened all across the country (and are approaching the prediction outlined in that article), are you repeating this misinformation out of ignorance or malice? Of course, denying that interventions played a big role in preventing this from getting even more out of control would be be table-stakes with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23116782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23116782
- wwweston 6y ago
  > Nick Kristoff at the NYT predicted we might have more than 1m deaths by the end of the summer. This would be a considerably better prediction than the idea that asymptomatic spread can't be serious factor; it'd be merely off by a factor of 6 whereas I'm honestly not sure how anyone with a high school biology education could dismiss the possibility that a viral infection might be contagious and asymptomatic. And I don't know when Kristoff's prediction was made, but if it was before June, given a NYC-centric perspective it's a credible projection absent changes of behavior and treatment advances, both of which we got in modest degrees (probably around a factor of 6). Plenty of wrong to go around? Sure. Some parties seem to be carrying more of the plenty.
- cameldrv 6y ago
  The magnitudes of these errors are wildly different. The U.S. actually had about 200,000 deaths at the end of the summer. A million was an overestimate, but this was on March 20. Kristof/Ferguson's error was 5x. On the other hand, on the same day, Levitt said that he would be surprised if Israel had more than 10 COVID deaths total. Currently Israel has 3307 COVID deaths, an error of 330x. He has made a whole series of wildly wrong predictions, all in the same direction.
  - timr 6y ago
    It's fairly clear from the linked article that he's saying given the low case count at the time (~400) he's not expecting more than ten deaths: "Speaking to Kan's Reshet Bet radio on Wednesday, Levitt, who lives part-time in Tel Aviv, said that on a global scale, the number of cases in Israel is very small." Regardless of what you think of Levitt, he's clearly not making predictions about the indefinite future.

by nafizh 6y ago

xhkkffbf 6y ago

There's plenty of "wrong" to go around. Nick Kristoff at the NYT predicted we might have more than 1m deaths by the end of the summer. In the US. But he's not shutting up. And gosh, Neil Ferguson, the famous epidemiologist in England keeps coming up with predictions based on the thinnest amount of data. Yet he's not shutting up. I think everyone who is devoting any time to shutting down or shutting up someone else would be better served spending the time generating better data. Censorship is a terrible impulse.

dumborlying 6y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coronavirus-trump-response.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coron... Given that the 1M prediction was with no intervention, and interventions happened all across the country (and are approaching the prediction outlined in that article), are you repeating this misinformation out of ignorance or malice? Of course, denying that interventions played a big role in preventing this from getting even more out of control would be be table-stakes with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23116782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23116782
wwweston 6y ago
> Nick Kristoff at the NYT predicted we might have more than 1m deaths by the end of the summer. This would be a considerably better prediction than the idea that asymptomatic spread can't be serious factor; it'd be merely off by a factor of 6 whereas I'm honestly not sure how anyone with a high school biology education could dismiss the possibility that a viral infection might be contagious and asymptomatic. And I don't know when Kristoff's prediction was made, but if it was before June, given a NYC-centric perspective it's a credible projection absent changes of behavior and treatment advances, both of which we got in modest degrees (probably around a factor of 6). Plenty of wrong to go around? Sure. Some parties seem to be carrying more of the plenty.
cameldrv 6y ago
The magnitudes of these errors are wildly different. The U.S. actually had about 200,000 deaths at the end of the summer. A million was an overestimate, but this was on March 20. Kristof/Ferguson's error was 5x. On the other hand, on the same day, Levitt said that he would be surprised if Israel had more than 10 COVID deaths total. Currently Israel has 3307 COVID deaths, an error of 330x. He has made a whole series of wildly wrong predictions, all in the same direction.
- timr 6y ago
  It's fairly clear from the linked article that he's saying given the low case count at the time (~400) he's not expecting more than ten deaths: "Speaking to Kan's Reshet Bet radio on Wednesday, Levitt, who lives part-time in Tel Aviv, said that on a global scale, the number of cases in Israel is very small." Regardless of what you think of Levitt, he's clearly not making predictions about the indefinite future.