As COVID-19 continues to keep the world in lock-down, there are signs that panic sparked by dire early predictions was hugely overblown, as were the draconian political actions that followed. Predicted death totals are plunging, not merely slipping, and somewhere in the discrepancies between then and now lies an important lesson for the entire world. Pray we learn it.
The worst-case scenario came from world-class university Imperial College London, who, in mid March, suggested a staggering 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. and 500,000 in Great Britain if neither society took any mitigation efforts at all.
On March 31, Global News ran a story suggesting the number of US deaths could range from 100,000 to 240,000, though this time those numbers considered Americans staying home and practicing social distancing.
On April 8, the key forecasting modelused by the White House revised its prediction to a peak of 60,415 by early August. So, the most recent prediction is less than 3% of the worst-case scenario from mid-March and 25% to 60% of the total in Global News’ one-week old report.
The COVID-19 predictions show a marked drop for a reason. Early models were assumption heavy and data poor, so the resulting predictions were little more than wild guesses. As time goes on and actual data is incorporated into the models, the predictions understandably shift towards a more realistic reality. The trend is consistent and, to not put too fine a point on it, massive.
There is a good chance that the COVID-19 model’s death predictions will continue to drop over the next few weeks as further data is factored into them, unless, and don’t count this out, deaths caused by other factors such as diabetes or cancer are incorrectly attributed to COVID-19. The use of correlated numbers to pad causal totals is fraudulently misleading.
Early COVID-19 models are the equivalent of running sports analytics on next season’s estimated statistics, and we’re being forced to bet heavily on them.
In the political realm, self-fulling prophecies are associated with life-and-death situations and, when followed, eventually create the conditions that generate the very problems the prophecy warned against.
Climate Models have the media, schools, and governments waging all-out war on the primary source of our energy needs, efficient and affordable oil-and-gas, without consideration to the deadly effects that imposed solutions force upon the world. Solar plants and wind farms are inefficient energy producers whose power output is difficult to incorporate onto our current grid. Our increasing reliance on them could put the country into energy poverty, a deadly condition in freezing temperatures.
COVID-19 models have vaccinated the world with insane panic, leading to extreme life-style changes and extraordinary economic harm that has the potential to ruin millions of families for years.
The human species is as vulnerable to logical manipulation as it is to emotional exploitation, maybe more so because while we understand we make mistakes in “the heat of the moment”, we implicitly trust our logical conclusions due to their rationality. Setting intellect aside, the problem here is that our general conclusions are only as good as the data or information we use to make them.
By treating model predictions as factual truth, we logically conclude that fear and panic is warranted. In doing so we not only justify quick and drastic political action that will cause harm; we clamour for it. Data challenged model predictions are a terrible source of critical information.
Profits Of Doom
Follow the money, they say, and there may be some truth to that maxim.
Fear doesn’t just wield political might, allowing politicians to quickly enact draconian policies bereft of data and debate, it delivers massive financial windfalls to those willing to exploit it, particularly when you are able to help stoke the fires of panic. It’s a voracious, vicious cycle.
After leaving Congress, Al Gore’s net worth apparently ballooned from a healthy $1.7 million to more than $300 million, and all we got was Carbon Taxes, job losses, and a fact free documentary.
Governments have cashed in by relentlessly promoting and exploiting the climate panic to institute policy that has not only destroyed jobs but bilked the people of earth of hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of their hard-earned wealth.
The effective shut down of society is proof enough of COVID-19’s political panic potential. The financial opportunity here rests in vaccines and, what do you know, one of the world’s richest people is pushing for mandatory global vaccines. No word of a lie. Listen to Microsoft founder Bill Gates for yourself.
Bill Gates on Population Control
Talk about making your market! Imagine the revenue potential where your client base is every individual on the entire planet, and all must comply.
Strangely, Mr. Bill sees vaccines as part of the solution to overpopulation. Seriously. I’ll let you square that circle.
Stopping The Model Madness
Fear is a powerful motivator which imbues it with incredible exploitive potential but it does have a weakness. Its strength depletes as people become educated about it, which is why politicians and bad actors rush to exploit it.
Models are most certainly being used to generate fear and panic in the public, but are modellers to blame? Yes, if they have political or financial motivations or work to suppress knowledge of their model’s inadequacies. No, if they’re doing the best they can with limited data.
The same can’t be said about the media because they choose to share the news that scares, and they act in concert to sound the siren relentlessly. They refuse to soften the impact of their message by stressing model uncertainties and, more disturbingly, they are deliberately downplaying the proven effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine treatments. This is unconscionable and disrespectful behaviour.
We would do well to understand that model predictions are not truth and that the weaker the underlying data, the less accurate those predictions will be. This would diminish the media’s ability to use erroneous predictions as fear generators, undermining their exploitive potential.
We need more political leaders who are willing to place people’s welfare ahead of their own ambitions, a trait rarer than Sasquatch proof here in Canada. In addition, they need the fortitude to push back against improper model usage, which means the courage to demand accountability from a deliberately deceitful media industry.
Those are the people who will be capable of injecting a measure of calm and rationality into our emotionally charged, fast acting political process.
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