Why they’re winning. The “elites” (as has been the case for many years now) have not covered themselves with glory here.
Category Archives: Health
Ferguson’s Imperial Model
A code review.
Good lord.
This reminds me an awful lot of the code that was leaked from CRU. S**t climate coding has done a lot of economic damage, but nowhere near as rapidly as this has, with tens of thousands of deaths to boot.
[Update a few minutes later]
A devastating conclusion:
All papers based on this code should be retracted immediately. Imperial’s modelling efforts should be reset with a new team that isn’t under Professor Ferguson, and which has a commitment to replicable results with published code from day one.
On a personal level, I’d go further and suggest that all academic epidemiology be defunded. This sort of work is best done by the insurance sector. Insurers employ modellers and data scientists, but also employ managers whose job is to decide whether a model is accurate enough for real world usage and professional software engineers to ensure model software is properly tested, understandable and so on. Academic efforts don’t have these people, and the results speak for themselves.
Same with climate modeling. Get it out of the universities. Particularly Penn State.
[Update a while later]
What Ferguson’s booty call tells us about our “elites.”
[Friday-afternoon update]
The model that panicked the world was junk.
Viral Load
Thoughts on taking it seriously.
This would have a huge impact on policy.
The Social-Distancing Experiment
…has failed.
This reminds me of the old Soviet joke about the kid in a classroom, asking if Marx was the greatest scientist in history. After being assured by the teacher that that was the case, he asked “Well, why didn’t he try this crap on rats first?”
[Update a while later]
Policy and punditry must adapt to new data.
Postmodernism
It’s the latest victim of the plague.
As the old saying goes, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.
The Masque Of Red Death
Thoughts from Lileks on web advertising, the history of miracle cures, and China.
Overmothered Men
America is awash in them. Not just “overmothered” but, more importantly, underfathered. This is also a key part of the sociocultural dysfunction in the black community, because welfare policies encouraged so many black women to marry the government instead of the fathers of their children.
Orange County
A judge has refused to overturn Newsom’s capricious order to shut down its beaches.
Ventilators
Why is JPL building them?
On top of the point that they still have to be mass produced, we now have a surplus, and we’re finding out that in many cases we don’t need them (and may have been killing people with them).
[Update a few minutes later]
Related Twitter thread. Pronation seems to be more effective and safer than ventilators.
Half-Whitmer
Five local businesses have filed suit against her. Good for them.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Are Michigan Republicans growing less supine? One can only hope.
[Update a while later]
Armed protesters flood Lansing as Whitmer attempts to override the legislature.
[Saturday-morning update]
Last link is fixed, sorry.