“For any model of a complex phenomenon—the weather, the climate, financial markets, or the progression of a disease—substitute “our best guess” for the word “model” and you have a better understanding of what the model actually is.” SLL, “Truth Irrelevancy Project Update,” July 1, 2020. Peter C. Earle takes a lot longer to say it, but nothing in this article contradicts the above statement. From Earle at aier.org:
As data accrues on both a national and state-by-state basis, the parameters of COVID-19’s lethality is firming up. Two new papers from Dr. John Ioannidis point to the growing shortfall between apocalyptic pandemic predictions and the vastly more destructive policies implemented in observance of them.
The first, entitled “Population-level COVID-19 mortality risk for non-elderly individuals overall and for non-elderly individuals without underlying diseases in pandemic epicenters” offers more evidence supporting the assertion that the government reaction to the virus has been vastly overwrought.
Using data from 11 European countries, 12 US states, and Canada, Ioannidis and his team show that the infection rate is much higher than previously thought, which suggests that both the incidence of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases is higher than thought, and the fatality rate much lower than previously estimated.
As regards the age of victims,
People [under] 65 years old have very small risks of COVID-19 death even in pandemic epicenters and deaths for people [under] 65 years without underlying predisposing conditions are remarkably uncommon. Strategies focusing specifically on protecting high-risk elderly individuals should be considered in managing the pandemic.
In the other paper, “Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed,” Ioanndis and co-authors take aim at the reasons for which the predictions were so incredibly inaccurate. Early predictions included that New York needed up to 140,000 hospital beds for stricken COVID-19 victims; the total number of individuals hospitalized was 18,569.
