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The modelling has been wrong. Early on someone ran Sweden's numbers through Neil Ferguson's model's business-as-usual scenario, and the model's estimates of cas

by alvah 5y ago

The modelling has been wrong. Early on someone ran Sweden's numbers through Neil Ferguson's model's business-as-usual scenario, and the model's estimates of cases and deaths were much higher than observed reality (by around an order of magnitude IIRC).

noahtallen 5y ago
I’m a bit confused by this example. Are you saying that the model showed higher cases in a non-lockdown analysis compared to fewer cases in the real world with lockdowns? If so, wouldn’t that be expected? If not, what does “business-as-usual” mean?
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  In this example, Sweden had no lockdown.
  - noahtallen 5y ago
    Cool, thanks for elaborating.
Gibbon1 5y ago
I've been finding it somewhat telling that people that make the argument you are making presume that no one else has any agency. And won't take precautions without the government forcing them to.
_djo_ 5y ago
That's false, Imperial College's modelling of Sweden actually matched real-world deaths fairly closely. For instance, it assessed Swedish deaths to 31 March 2020 as being 240 [140-440] with zero interventions, or 160 [110-240] with slight interventions. It estimated deaths up to 28 March 2020 as 89 [61-120]. Actual deaths to 28 March 2020 were 92. What someone else did was to take the Imperial College model and run it against a bunch of populations without properly adjusting the parameters to account for factors like population density, age, etc. They had no real idea how the model worked, but then claimed that it was wrong. I think it's clear the most of the COVID-19 epidemiology models created around the world were accurate enough in their goal, which was to test the relative effectiveness of interventions and give broad predictions of relative impact. None were perfect, but then no model like this whether epidemiological, economic, or similar is ever going to be 100% accurate.

by alvah 5y ago

noahtallen 5y ago

I’m a bit confused by this example. Are you saying that the model showed higher cases in a non-lockdown analysis compared to fewer cases in the real world with lockdowns? If so, wouldn’t that be expected? If not, what does “business-as-usual” mean?

thinkingemote 5y ago
In this example, Sweden had no lockdown.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  Cool, thanks for elaborating.

Gibbon1 5y ago

I've been finding it somewhat telling that people that make the argument you are making presume that no one else has any agency. And won't take precautions without the government forcing them to.

_djo_ 5y ago

That's false, Imperial College's modelling of Sweden actually matched real-world deaths fairly closely. For instance, it assessed Swedish deaths to 31 March 2020 as being 240 [140-440] with zero interventions, or 160 [110-240] with slight interventions. It estimated deaths up to 28 March 2020 as 89 [61-120]. Actual deaths to 28 March 2020 were 92. What someone else did was to take the Imperial College model and run it against a bunch of populations without properly adjusting the parameters to account for factors like population density, age, etc. They had no real idea how the model worked, but then claimed that it was wrong. I think it's clear the most of the COVID-19 epidemiology models created around the world were accurate enough in their goal, which was to test the relative effectiveness of interventions and give broad predictions of relative impact. None were perfect, but then no model like this whether epidemiological, economic, or similar is ever going to be 100% accurate.