Failures of an Influential COVID-19 Model Used to Justify Lockdowns
May 18th, 2020 4 min read
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1) We now know the model was so highly flawed it never should have been relied upon for policy decisions to begin with.
2) As we learn more about the new coronavirus, it is imperative to continue to update the assumptions used in these models.
3) The Imperial College model didn’t meet any of these criteria. And sadly, its model was one of the inputs relied on as the basis for locking down two countries.
Yes I was wondering when someone will come out and say that the modelling is a joke, just as it is for climate change. The only difference this time is thousands of lives are at stake. I think we already have a good case for our political leaders and health officials to be charged with democide although I’m not sure if there are laws at the moment to cover it.
This modelling is not like climate change. That doesn’t make it right, but it’s 20 pages not 2000, it’s all published, the assumptions are spelled out and it isn’t trying to predict waves of infections on a regional basis using a bottom up grid system with error bars wider than the trends.
I didn’t say how the modelling worked in either case. Of course they are different. I am a retired scientist who has done some modelling of atmospheric physics for my PhD in physics so I would understand the difference. I was referring to the fact they are MODELS. That’s all.
There is an element of that creeping into this site. The refusal to see Delta’s attenuated effects (alongside its more infectiousness) is a strong contributor to the scare porn.
Eventually adaptation to the virus by any means – largely of a prophylactic nature along with natural exposure will waste this problem. It has been said that we will have to live with this and nothing is more true. We tend to over complicate things.
Nice hit piece on the ABC’s 7:30 Report tonight with the US doctor treating CoViD patients stating Ivermectin wasn’t proven so he couldn’t recommend it – ie HE HAS NEVER TRIED IT with his patients.
I have managed to track down a supply of Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin & Quercetin.
The Ivermectin with a doctors script, from a local chemist. The other 2 are from over seas & are costing an arm & a leg, but it is possible to get them.
If you don;t trust the current options of vaccines offered, put in the effort, & you will be rewarded.
Researchers seem to have given up trying to find a vaccine for HIV.
However, antiviral therapy is fully accepted as a treatment for HIV, although not a cure in that case.
Until a sterilising vaccine is developed for COVID, if indeed that is possible, antiviral therapies may have to be the preferred treatment. However, unlike HIV, presumably antivirals will completely destroy COVID and it won’t reoccur once antivirals are stopped.
Why is antiviral therapy for COVID so hard to accept?
I still suspect SARS-CoV-2 was a HIV vaccine experiment gone wrong given the issue with the Queensland vaccine candidate producing HIV positive test results.
What they are trying to do is distract Australians from the real debate which is about borders and antivirals, and many Australians are falling for it.
Restricting viral content on the tele would force people to do more research, think for themselves, and might even help to facilitate more public debate from a variety of expert opinion which is completely missing in action, even censored, at the moment.
I would not ban the tele completely, however some kind of restriction on the tele, perhaps a curfew on virus related material on the tele after 6pm until 10am the following day would help.
I understand your point, but I suspect it might be more useful to restrict funding on the ABC from 2021 until the year they start to report both sides.
Once the ABC shows both points of view, the rest of the channels will follow.
Ok, I’m thoroughly confused now. Are we supposed to be supporting lockdowns to try and eliminate the virus or not?
I’ve always pushed the need to start using effective anti-virals so we can open up again but then we had the NZ house burning thread so what is this site advocating?
No one knows for sure whether lockdowns are of any value especially when other illnesses and deaths due to other issues are taken into account, such as stress, lack of excercise, delay in hospital checks, suicides, etc.. We are all in the dark so to speak and just guessing. In any case lockdowns can’t eradicate the cases. WA for example thinks they can but of course they are telling lies and it’s all political. So, if one can’t eradicate the cases and lockdowns can’t go on forever, they have to stop using them at some stage regardless of the case numbers, unless of course one wants to crash and burn our economy. It is really time to accept the reality that people die for a variety of reasons. We need to get out of our virtual prison state.
Analitik Ok, I’m thoroughly confused now. Are we supposed to be supporting lockdowns to try and eliminate the virus or not?
Sorry, evidently it needed rewriting. My policy is the same as it always was. Real freedom is freedom from Chinese bioweapons, freedom from mandatory vax, freedom from lockdowns. In that order. So to prevent the first two I’ll accept the short sharp effective lockdowns every now and again. Though I’d rather they got the border right.
The fire in the house analogy was merely to show that with exponential growth, if you are going to have to put it out sometime, then asap is the cheapest solution.
Elimination is better than “flattening the curve”.
Sometime we will have to learn to live with the virus but we can do so much better than a one eyed pure vaccine solution with leaky first generation vaxes. We should be combining vaccines and anti virals for starters, or just combinging antivirals..
.
PeterS: I’m baffled? I’m not in a prison state. We live like Covid doesn’t exist. What part of Western Australia looks like a lie to you?
I’m grateful to have this much freedom. I just wish the rest of Australia and NZ (and friends everywhere else could live like we do here.) Is that so bad? I can do anything I’d normally do apart from fly across the country.
Jo, I live in a prison state, Vicdanistan. I would leave in an instant if I could. No fun in the prison states and certainly not good for one’s mental or economic health.
You have my sympathies. NSW should have protected the limo driver. Dan — sadly – -should have guarded the border better. Morrison would have helped more if he had encouraged states to use borders better and if he had built proper quarantine facilities last year.
Victorians have had a lot of lockdowns. We must find better ways to avoid them. I wish the vaccines were the answer. But they are not…
being locked down is rather like experiencing a dam bursting when people are released. It is far better to not lockdown but have sensible precautions, so people are experiencing life properly and do not feel they need to go mad when they are released. This link is Reading pop festival
Here in the West country we had a very similar event last week called Boardman that centres round surf culture. Very many of the young people tested positive, they will infect their parents, they will work in hospitality and infect customers and also some will be teachers and will infect pupils.
it is self evident that it is the young that need to be locked down but that will not happen.
so a steady flow of normal life is needed, so the dam does not burst.
Yep, we are a cosseted lot these days. No one is supposed to die from this because the politics say so. When I look around me I see a set of clueless, frightened people. Sad, and pathetic
Talk about ramping up the hysteria to near panic, ABC reports “Victoria will fly in 350 medical staff from overseas” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-25/victoria-melbourne-covid-cases-pfizer-vaccine-available/100404804 and now there’s TGA concerns that too much ivermectin is being imported so expect it to be criminalized with hundred thousand dollar fines for being found in possession –worse than ice and crack…
A year ago I was saying an infection delayed was NOT an infection avoided. I was willing to change my mind as vaccines were rolled out but it seems I was right first time.
It is always logical to reconsider things as they evolve but it comes down to the old philosophical position: what can we know. Things have changed since Voltaire wrote “Candide”.
This part of a comment by a Quadrant online contributor Rod.Stuart perked my interest
“Since the “virus” has never been isolated, the CDC in it wisdom? decided to use a common cold or influenza virus as the reference for the RT-PCR test which, by the way, was totally inadequate for diagnosis. In addition to that, our own TGA declared on it site for health professionals in October 2020 the test is “unreliable and inadequate. Finally, the FDA declared in July of this year that it would withdraw the EUA for the test. This renderes the data produced with this test, and therefore the “cases” is completely and utterly useless.”
A large team of more than 1,000 lawyers and over 10,000 medical experts, led by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, has initiated legal proceedings against theCDC, WHO and the Davos Group for crimes against humanity.Fuellmich and his team present the incorrect PCR test and the order for doctors to describe any comorbidity death as a Covid death –as fraud.The PCR test was never designed to detect pathogens and is 100% inaccurate at 35 cycles. All PCR tests monitored by the CDC are set at 37 to 45 cycles. The CDC acknowledges that tests over 28 cycles are not allowed for a positive reliable result.
The only difference this time is thousands of lives are at stake here and millions worldwide. We still need to wait for a while though to see definite effects of the vaccines to avoid jumping the gun. It would then be much easier to prove the actions of our officialdom wrt the pandemic would be a good case for democide. If proven they would be liable for crimes against humanity. I have little doubt though once they get hint of such a possibility they will come up with another scam to create a diversion and avoid taking responsibility.
Apologies, I’ve just realized that the post was published in draft, and I didn’t want to either delete the comments, nor to keep editing and leave them replying to material that had changed after they were made.
I was honing the message anyhow, but now I have an opportunity to answer more of the questions in the final draft.
And those that don’t fit in the post I’ll try to return to later here…
Extrapolating these numbers out to the world on the back of an envelope -25 000 deaths in Aus, adds up to 70 million world wide. They did say “eventually” and “possibly”. Today India had 379 deaths. Indonesia’s death rate has dropped more than 50% in a month. I guess we can thank anti-virals? If the models are to be correct, we’re in for a big/massive/huge/gigantic shock.
If we just had the same deaths per million as the UK we’d have lost 50,000 people already.
So it isn’t that outrageous a model prediction. The contentious thing is whether the Delta variant is really that deadly, and whether 80% vax could protect any better.
Why wait for the perfect vaccine or 100% take up? Continued lockdowns are complete madness. There will never be a cure that saves everybody.170000 people die in Australia every year, including 8500 alcohol related deaths, but nobody suggests locking up bars and breweries. Governments just need to include anti virals in the arsenal then slowly open up and get on with living.
This “modelling” seems suspiciously like climate “models”. All doom and gloom and no validation.
Are they based on the discredited Ferguson model from the UK which he refused to disclose the code for?
100
https://www.heritage.org/public-health/commentary/failures-influential-covid-19-model-used-justify-lockdowns
Failures of an Influential COVID-19 Model Used to Justify Lockdowns
May 18th, 2020 4 min read
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1) We now know the model was so highly flawed it never should have been relied upon for policy decisions to begin with.
2) As we learn more about the new coronavirus, it is imperative to continue to update the assumptions used in these models.
3) The Imperial College model didn’t meet any of these criteria. And sadly, its model was one of the inputs relied on as the basis for locking down two countries.
SEE LINK FOR REST
50
Have no fear…Pfizer is here with a new variant specific jab for you.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/pfizer-ceo-says-covid-19-vaccine-resistant-variant-likely-emerge-pharma-co-system-place-release-new-variant-specific-jab-3-months-video/
They’ve already projected what future variant is coming for your convenience.
Please take the jab our profits are unbelievably good switching the flu into the Covid propaganda.
40
If you don’t quite understand what is going on, this article explains everything quite well with this Pandemic.
https://www.algora.com/Algora_blog/2021/08/23/could-it-be-a-population-reduction-plot-after-all
10
Yes I was wondering when someone will come out and say that the modelling is a joke, just as it is for climate change. The only difference this time is thousands of lives are at stake. I think we already have a good case for our political leaders and health officials to be charged with democide although I’m not sure if there are laws at the moment to cover it.
00
This modelling is not like climate change. That doesn’t make it right, but it’s 20 pages not 2000, it’s all published, the assumptions are spelled out and it isn’t trying to predict waves of infections on a regional basis using a bottom up grid system with error bars wider than the trends.
And it is unrelated to the Oxford predictions.
00
I didn’t say how the modelling worked in either case. Of course they are different. I am a retired scientist who has done some modelling of atmospheric physics for my PhD in physics so I would understand the difference. I was referring to the fact they are MODELS. That’s all.
00
Chicken Little. The sky is falling (again)
60
There is an element of that creeping into this site. The refusal to see Delta’s attenuated effects (alongside its more infectiousness) is a strong contributor to the scare porn.
90
Eventually adaptation to the virus by any means – largely of a prophylactic nature along with natural exposure will waste this problem. It has been said that we will have to live with this and nothing is more true. We tend to over complicate things.
20
Ivermectin is one of the safest of all drugs.
There is nothing to lose by allowing or encouraging it to be used.
Try it on volunteers, at the very worst it will do no harm and it might be proven to be the miracle treatment it seems to be.
I wouldn’t want to be one of the ones advocating against its use when the masses realise lives were unnecessarily lost by a failure to use it.
210
Nice hit piece on the ABC’s 7:30 Report tonight with the US doctor treating CoViD patients stating Ivermectin wasn’t proven so he couldn’t recommend it – ie HE HAS NEVER TRIED IT with his patients.
100
For balance they should have also interviewed someone who had tried it according to established protocols.
60
ABC – balance? ROFLMAO!
20
I have managed to track down a supply of Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin & Quercetin.
The Ivermectin with a doctors script, from a local chemist. The other 2 are from over seas & are costing an arm & a leg, but it is possible to get them.
If you don;t trust the current options of vaccines offered, put in the effort, & you will be rewarded.
40
Researchers seem to have given up trying to find a vaccine for HIV.
However, antiviral therapy is fully accepted as a treatment for HIV, although not a cure in that case.
Until a sterilising vaccine is developed for COVID, if indeed that is possible, antiviral therapies may have to be the preferred treatment. However, unlike HIV, presumably antivirals will completely destroy COVID and it won’t reoccur once antivirals are stopped.
Why is antiviral therapy for COVID so hard to accept?
110
I still suspect SARS-CoV-2 was a HIV vaccine experiment gone wrong given the issue with the Queensland vaccine candidate producing HIV positive test results.
100
Restricting viral content on the tele would force people to do more research, think for themselves, and might even help to facilitate more public debate from a variety of expert opinion which is completely missing in action, even censored, at the moment.
I would not ban the tele completely, however some kind of restriction on the tele, perhaps a curfew on virus related material on the tele after 6pm until 10am the following day would help.
20
I understand your point, but I suspect it might be more useful to restrict funding on the ABC from 2021 until the year they start to report both sides.
Once the ABC shows both points of view, the rest of the channels will follow.
50
Ok, I’m thoroughly confused now. Are we supposed to be supporting lockdowns to try and eliminate the virus or not?
I’ve always pushed the need to start using effective anti-virals so we can open up again but then we had the NZ house burning thread so what is this site advocating?
60
No one knows for sure whether lockdowns are of any value especially when other illnesses and deaths due to other issues are taken into account, such as stress, lack of excercise, delay in hospital checks, suicides, etc.. We are all in the dark so to speak and just guessing. In any case lockdowns can’t eradicate the cases. WA for example thinks they can but of course they are telling lies and it’s all political. So, if one can’t eradicate the cases and lockdowns can’t go on forever, they have to stop using them at some stage regardless of the case numbers, unless of course one wants to crash and burn our economy. It is really time to accept the reality that people die for a variety of reasons. We need to get out of our virtual prison state.
60
Analitik
Ok, I’m thoroughly confused now. Are we supposed to be supporting lockdowns to try and eliminate the virus or not?
Sorry, evidently it needed rewriting. My policy is the same as it always was. Real freedom is freedom from Chinese bioweapons, freedom from mandatory vax, freedom from lockdowns. In that order. So to prevent the first two I’ll accept the short sharp effective lockdowns every now and again. Though I’d rather they got the border right.
The fire in the house analogy was merely to show that with exponential growth, if you are going to have to put it out sometime, then asap is the cheapest solution.
Elimination is better than “flattening the curve”.
Sometime we will have to learn to live with the virus but we can do so much better than a one eyed pure vaccine solution with leaky first generation vaxes. We should be combining vaccines and anti virals for starters, or just combinging antivirals..
.
PeterS: I’m baffled? I’m not in a prison state. We live like Covid doesn’t exist. What part of Western Australia looks like a lie to you?
I’m grateful to have this much freedom. I just wish the rest of Australia and NZ (and friends everywhere else could live like we do here.) Is that so bad? I can do anything I’d normally do apart from fly across the country.
00
Jo, I live in a prison state, Vicdanistan. I would leave in an instant if I could. No fun in the prison states and certainly not good for one’s mental or economic health.
30
You have my sympathies. NSW should have protected the limo driver. Dan — sadly – -should have guarded the border better. Morrison would have helped more if he had encouraged states to use borders better and if he had built proper quarantine facilities last year.
Victorians have had a lot of lockdowns. We must find better ways to avoid them. I wish the vaccines were the answer. But they are not…
00
jo
being locked down is rather like experiencing a dam bursting when people are released. It is far better to not lockdown but have sensible precautions, so people are experiencing life properly and do not feel they need to go mad when they are released. This link is Reading pop festival
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9929419/Camp-Covid-Sea-tents-Reading-Festival-thousands-prepare-party-Bank-Holiday-weekend.html
Here in the West country we had a very similar event last week called Boardman that centres round surf culture. Very many of the young people tested positive, they will infect their parents, they will work in hospitality and infect customers and also some will be teachers and will infect pupils.
it is self evident that it is the young that need to be locked down but that will not happen.
so a steady flow of normal life is needed, so the dam does not burst.
00
Not one mention of natural immunity. The world’s gone mad!
100
Yep, we are a cosseted lot these days. No one is supposed to die from this because the politics say so. When I look around me I see a set of clueless, frightened people. Sad, and pathetic
70
Talk about ramping up the hysteria to near panic, ABC reports “Victoria will fly in 350 medical staff from overseas” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-25/victoria-melbourne-covid-cases-pfizer-vaccine-available/100404804 and now there’s TGA concerns that too much ivermectin is being imported so expect it to be criminalized with hundred thousand dollar fines for being found in possession –worse than ice and crack…
80
““Victoria will fly in 350 medical staff from overseas” “
14 day quarantine, of course ! 😉
30
“Victoria will fly in 350 medical staff from overseas”
From Beijing?
10
l wonder if this has anything to do with Dandemic signing up Victoriastan to the strong cities initiative a while ago?
20
A year ago I was saying an infection delayed was NOT an infection avoided. I was willing to change my mind as vaccines were rolled out but it seems I was right first time.
70
It is always logical to reconsider things as they evolve but it comes down to the old philosophical position: what can we know. Things have changed since Voltaire wrote “Candide”.
00
This part of a comment by a Quadrant online contributor Rod.Stuart perked my interest
“Since the “virus” has never been isolated, the CDC in it wisdom? decided to use a common cold or influenza virus as the reference for the RT-PCR test which, by the way, was totally inadequate for diagnosis. In addition to that, our own TGA declared on it site for health professionals in October 2020 the test is “unreliable and inadequate. Finally, the FDA declared in July of this year that it would withdraw the EUA for the test. This renderes the data produced with this test, and therefore the “cases” is completely and utterly useless.”
Is this true?
On further investigation I found this
https://www.citizensjournal.us/breaking-cdc-fda-faked-covid-testing-protocol-by-using-human-cells-mixed-with-common-cold-virus-fragments-pcr-tests-are-merely-detecting-the-common-cold/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=pmd_AExNlKujbMELa498Co1hSk_T1saoABVkJSds9VNnpQQ-1629852562-0-gqNtZGzNAuWjcnBszQd9
I checked the CDC link and indeed it does say, on page 41, that they didnt have Covid virus isolate to develop and calibrate the test.
If this is correct, the implications are huge. Have they been finding fragments of the cold virus and calling it covid?
Obviously something else is going on, after all, the flu has vanished….are they even looking for it?
Is a faulty PCR test behind the push to vaccinate?
Are these vaccinated people going to be a danger to the unvaccinated?
70
1,000 Lawyers and 10,000 Doctors Have Filed a Lawsuit for Violations of the Nuremberg Code
60
great find Brenda 😉
it is what my crowd have been saying for quite some time
“Are these vaccinated people going to be a danger to the unvaccinated?”
what has been said is that the vaccinated will be a danger to the vaccinated as the virus mutates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE1_SdwJmnY
None of this has been about saving lives. It’s all about profit, power gain, and control.
keep looking after your natural immunity
50
The only difference this time is thousands of lives are at stake here and millions worldwide. We still need to wait for a while though to see definite effects of the vaccines to avoid jumping the gun. It would then be much easier to prove the actions of our officialdom wrt the pandemic would be a good case for democide. If proven they would be liable for crimes against humanity. I have little doubt though once they get hint of such a possibility they will come up with another scam to create a diversion and avoid taking responsibility.
10
Apologies, I’ve just realized that the post was published in draft, and I didn’t want to either delete the comments, nor to keep editing and leave them replying to material that had changed after they were made.
I was honing the message anyhow, but now I have an opportunity to answer more of the questions in the final draft.
And those that don’t fit in the post I’ll try to return to later here…
40
Extrapolating these numbers out to the world on the back of an envelope -25 000 deaths in Aus, adds up to 70 million world wide. They did say “eventually” and “possibly”. Today India had 379 deaths. Indonesia’s death rate has dropped more than 50% in a month. I guess we can thank anti-virals? If the models are to be correct, we’re in for a big/massive/huge/gigantic shock.
00
If we just had the same deaths per million as the UK we’d have lost 50,000 people already.
So it isn’t that outrageous a model prediction. The contentious thing is whether the Delta variant is really that deadly, and whether 80% vax could protect any better.
00
Thank Ivermectin
00
There are plenty of non-vaccine treatments out there that work. Even vitamin D, which is nearly as good as ivermectin:
https://c19early.com/
Why wait for the perfect vaccine or 100% take up? Continued lockdowns are complete madness. There will never be a cure that saves everybody.170000 people die in Australia every year, including 8500 alcohol related deaths, but nobody suggests locking up bars and breweries. Governments just need to include anti virals in the arsenal then slowly open up and get on with living.
60
More Oz from outside
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO_f4iB8jto
10