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UK did exactly the same thing. Everyone was panicking that the epidemic would grow exponentially and the hospitals would get over-run. Hence freeing up beds, a

UK did exactly the same thing. Everyone was panicking that the epidemic would grow exponentially and the hospitals would get over-run. Hence freeing up beds, and building a bunch of eventually pointless overflow hospitals. A lot of modelling was claiming that's exactly what would happen, e.g. Imperial College London claiming millions of deaths, while the actual infection curves never hit those numbers. In hindsight, that's not how the virus works, it seems to infect clusters and then drops and eventually levels out, jumps to a new clusters does the same thing, and on.

deleted 6y ago
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WalterGR 6y ago
> Imperial College London claiming millions of deaths, while the actual infection curves never hit those numbers. Because we took action to avoid that. I truly don't understand why people keep repeating such dezinformatsiya.
- timr 6y ago
  The Imperial College report included projections if all recommended NPIs were implemented. That includes lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and so on. Those projections were still wildly off the mark. There is no way to look at their projections and take them seriously as modelers. They were simply wrong. They made bad parameter assumptions, didn't question their results or cross-validate, and ran with the scariest projections of their models.
  - WalterGR 6y ago
    I don't think that's correct. https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/in-defense-of-mathematical-models https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/in-defense-of-mathema... "For those readers who are unfamiliar with it, the Imperial College model is the one that projected that 2.2 million Americans (and 510,000 residents of the UK) could die from COVID-19 over the next two years without public health interventions." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6 "When updated data in the Imperial team’s model indicated that the United Kingdom’s health service would soon be overwhelmed with severe cases of COVID-19, and might face more than 500,000 deaths if the government took no action... The same model suggested that, with no action, the United States might face 2.2 million deaths..."
    - timr 6y ago
      You should read the reports, and not news articles about the reports. These news articles are referring to the very first report, which made projections for the UK through October 2020. Here's the March 26, 2020 report, covering the rest of the world, with far more specific predictions: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-03-26-COVID19-Report-12.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/m... In this report, they predict 2.2 million deaths in the US in the unmitigated scenario, and over 1 million in the "social distancing" scenario. Their projection if the US "suppressed" the virus (by uniformly cutting contacts by 75% as soon as the death rate exceeded 1.6 per 100k; by my math, that's about 5,000 deaths) was 474,000 dead. So, uh...that was wrong. They projected 40 million deaths, worldwide (current actual total 3.14M) in the unmitigated scenario, with between 1.9M and 10.5M deaths in the "total suppression" scenario (depending on how soon lockdowns occurred). If you go to the spreadsheet [1], you'll see lots of other fun projections: * 470,000-670,000 deaths in Japan in the "social distancing" scenarios (current total: 10,031, despite living mostly normally throughout 2020). * 330k-740k deaths in the "social distancing" scenarios for France (620k-760k "unmitigated"; current total: just over 3M, despite a year of strict interventions). * Let's not forget their projection of 60,000-90,000 deaths in Sweden, in the "unmitigated" scenario (current total: 13,968). Overall, their predictions bear very little resemblance to reality. [1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-Global-unmitigated-mitigated-suppression-scenarios.xlsx https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
      - timr 6y ago
        Edit: I copied the wrong number for current deaths for France. Should be 104k, not 3M.
      - WalterGR 6y ago
        Here's the March 26, 2020 report Okay. And the revised reports?
        timr 6y ago
        I don't care what they did after they knew the answer. In the one prospective test that mattered, they utterly, hilariously failed. And in the process they caused huge collateral damage to society. This is why, in most fields of modeling with any intellectual rigor, we have blinded prospective tests.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

WalterGR 6y ago

> Imperial College London claiming millions of deaths, while the actual infection curves never hit those numbers. Because we took action to avoid that. I truly don't understand why people keep repeating such dezinformatsiya.

timr 6y ago
The Imperial College report included projections if all recommended NPIs were implemented. That includes lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and so on. Those projections were still wildly off the mark. There is no way to look at their projections and take them seriously as modelers. They were simply wrong. They made bad parameter assumptions, didn't question their results or cross-validate, and ran with the scariest projections of their models.
- WalterGR 6y ago
  I don't think that's correct. https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/in-defense-of-mathematical-models https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/in-defense-of-mathema... "For those readers who are unfamiliar with it, the Imperial College model is the one that projected that 2.2 million Americans (and 510,000 residents of the UK) could die from COVID-19 over the next two years without public health interventions." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6 "When updated data in the Imperial team’s model indicated that the United Kingdom’s health service would soon be overwhelmed with severe cases of COVID-19, and might face more than 500,000 deaths if the government took no action... The same model suggested that, with no action, the United States might face 2.2 million deaths..."
  - timr 6y ago
    You should read the reports, and not news articles about the reports. These news articles are referring to the very first report, which made projections for the UK through October 2020. Here's the March 26, 2020 report, covering the rest of the world, with far more specific predictions: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-03-26-COVID19-Report-12.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/m... In this report, they predict 2.2 million deaths in the US in the unmitigated scenario, and over 1 million in the "social distancing" scenario. Their projection if the US "suppressed" the virus (by uniformly cutting contacts by 75% as soon as the death rate exceeded 1.6 per 100k; by my math, that's about 5,000 deaths) was 474,000 dead. So, uh...that was wrong. They projected 40 million deaths, worldwide (current actual total 3.14M) in the unmitigated scenario, with between 1.9M and 10.5M deaths in the "total suppression" scenario (depending on how soon lockdowns occurred). If you go to the spreadsheet [1], you'll see lots of other fun projections: * 470,000-670,000 deaths in Japan in the "social distancing" scenarios (current total: 10,031, despite living mostly normally throughout 2020). * 330k-740k deaths in the "social distancing" scenarios for France (620k-760k "unmitigated"; current total: just over 3M, despite a year of strict interventions). * Let's not forget their projection of 60,000-90,000 deaths in Sweden, in the "unmitigated" scenario (current total: 13,968). Overall, their predictions bear very little resemblance to reality. [1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-Global-unmitigated-mitigated-suppression-scenarios.xlsx https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
    - timr 6y ago
      Edit: I copied the wrong number for current deaths for France. Should be 104k, not 3M.
    - WalterGR 6y ago
      Here's the March 26, 2020 report Okay. And the revised reports?
      - timr 6y ago
        I don't care what they did after they knew the answer. In the one prospective test that mattered, they utterly, hilariously failed. And in the process they caused huge collateral damage to society. This is why, in most fields of modeling with any intellectual rigor, we have blinded prospective tests.