More Speech, Not Less - American Greatness
https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/18/more-speech-not-less/
https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/18/more-speech-not-less/
American Greatness
More Speech, Not Less - American Greatness
odern reliance on technology has never been more evident than now. During the COVID-19 pandemic, modern technological advances have gone from conveniences to life-saving resources. But not for everyone. For people banned from tech platforms, the potential…
https://www.drc.ohio.gov/Portals/0/DRC%20COVID-19%20Information%2004-20-2020%20%201304_1.pdf
Some great data from Ohio, where
ohio began mass testing in prisons on April 11. The state now reports 3312 #SARS_CoV2 positive tests and 8 deaths among prisoners, 302 positive tests and 1 death among staff, for an infection fatality rate of 0.25%.
Two points here - the deaths are likely to keep rising (two overnight), so this may understate the current IFR; on the other hand, this population has high comorbidities and many tests remain pending.
Overall, yet more evidence of very widespread asymptomatic transmission.
Some great data from Ohio, where
ohio began mass testing in prisons on April 11. The state now reports 3312 #SARS_CoV2 positive tests and 8 deaths among prisoners, 302 positive tests and 1 death among staff, for an infection fatality rate of 0.25%.
Two points here - the deaths are likely to keep rising (two overnight), so this may understate the current IFR; on the other hand, this population has high comorbidities and many tests remain pending.
Overall, yet more evidence of very widespread asymptomatic transmission.
The CNN footnote story abridges the findings of the Horowitz report this way: “Steele’s report played no role in the opening of the FBI investigation, according to Horowitz, and he found that the most salacious allegations weren’t proven.” That’s a convenient formulation, considering that the Horowitz report said the FBI determined that the dossier was a mix of uncorroborated, inaccurate/inconsistent and publicly available information.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/18/steele-dossier-just-sustained-another-body-blow-wheres-media/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/18/steele-dossier-just-sustained-another-body-blow-wheres-media/
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/shut-up-the-experts-explained/
People whose expertise has been questioned often respond in ways that further alienate the skeptics. A good illustration comes from Vanity Fair’s profile of Alex Berenson, a leading advocate of the view that lockdowns are too strict. Berenson was one of the first journalists to point out that the IHME model, on which so many states rely, drastically overestimated hospitalizations — even after multiple revisions, and even after taking the effect of lockdowns into account. Here is the response from Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine, as quoted by Vanity Fair:
"Models are not crystal balls. A modeler is giving you a range of potential outcomes. What he [Berenson] is doing is what a lot of people who don’t understand science do, they take the uncertainty built into a model and say, “Oh, well, it shows these people don’t know what they are talking about.” He is playing with scientific uncertainty in order to say, “See, I know what is right here.” He is somebody with a messianic complex. And to be clear, all of the models say this is going to be one of the worst epidemics we have ever faced."
Note the arrogant tone, the name-calling, and the argument from authority. This is how Professor Gonsalves intends to win over the skeptics? It’s not even clear what his point is. Yes, all predictive models have uncertainty, but it follows that the more uncertain the model, the less useful its predictions are. That should not be controversial.
Furthermore, IHME has underestimated its own uncertainty. Although I am a mere policy analyst, I do know that when IHME offers 95 percent prediction intervals, then the actual values are supposed to fall outside those intervals only 5 percent of the time. Applying that standard, critics investigated how the IHME model has performed on what should be one of its easiest tasks — predicting the number of deaths that will occur the very next day. They found that over a four-day period, the actual number of next-day deaths in each state fell outside the model’s 95 percent interval about two-thirds of the time. The failure is self-evident. One need not have a “messianic complex” to reject this model’s predictions.
Finally, even if “all of the models say this is going to be one of the worst epidemics,” that is hardly the end of the policy debate. It can be simultaneously true that we face a terrible epidemic and that full lockdowns are an overreaction. The real issue is how far our mitigation attempts can go before they are no longer worth the economic and social costs. Even people who “understand science” might conclude that those attempts have already gone too far
People whose expertise has been questioned often respond in ways that further alienate the skeptics. A good illustration comes from Vanity Fair’s profile of Alex Berenson, a leading advocate of the view that lockdowns are too strict. Berenson was one of the first journalists to point out that the IHME model, on which so many states rely, drastically overestimated hospitalizations — even after multiple revisions, and even after taking the effect of lockdowns into account. Here is the response from Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine, as quoted by Vanity Fair:
"Models are not crystal balls. A modeler is giving you a range of potential outcomes. What he [Berenson] is doing is what a lot of people who don’t understand science do, they take the uncertainty built into a model and say, “Oh, well, it shows these people don’t know what they are talking about.” He is playing with scientific uncertainty in order to say, “See, I know what is right here.” He is somebody with a messianic complex. And to be clear, all of the models say this is going to be one of the worst epidemics we have ever faced."
Note the arrogant tone, the name-calling, and the argument from authority. This is how Professor Gonsalves intends to win over the skeptics? It’s not even clear what his point is. Yes, all predictive models have uncertainty, but it follows that the more uncertain the model, the less useful its predictions are. That should not be controversial.
Furthermore, IHME has underestimated its own uncertainty. Although I am a mere policy analyst, I do know that when IHME offers 95 percent prediction intervals, then the actual values are supposed to fall outside those intervals only 5 percent of the time. Applying that standard, critics investigated how the IHME model has performed on what should be one of its easiest tasks — predicting the number of deaths that will occur the very next day. They found that over a four-day period, the actual number of next-day deaths in each state fell outside the model’s 95 percent interval about two-thirds of the time. The failure is self-evident. One need not have a “messianic complex” to reject this model’s predictions.
Finally, even if “all of the models say this is going to be one of the worst epidemics,” that is hardly the end of the policy debate. It can be simultaneously true that we face a terrible epidemic and that full lockdowns are an overreaction. The real issue is how far our mitigation attempts can go before they are no longer worth the economic and social costs. Even people who “understand science” might conclude that those attempts have already gone too far
National Review
Shut Up, the Experts Explained | National Review
People whose expertise has been questioned often respond in ways that further alienate the skeptics.