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Comment by alabaster_punt | Hacker News Reader

What's dangerous about it is that it's encouraging people to demand that their government enact policies that will lead to unnecessary deaths.

Neil Ferguson's model was not flawed (at least, not in a significant way that would invalidate its conclusions)

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I welcome Youtube to ban every member of the press and Congress who publicly supported our various wars, which are government policies leading to "unnecessary deaths." Cherry picking a nobody with no power who is into crystals is bs.

Oh boy I wouldn't be so sure after having a look at it on github.

If you have a specific reason to believe that the model resulted in an incorrect conclusion, feel free to share it, instead of casting aspersions with cryptic nothings.

It looked very wonky. I cannot judge if the code does not actually produce something worthwhile, but it certainly doesn't pass any smell tests. In no profession would work looking as sloppy as that be trusted. And for the critical decision it was used for I would expect something more robust.

The model said if we don't lock things down China-style millions will die. But we see now from Sweden it was not true. See top graph: https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-c...

Also Neil's other predictions have been completely wrong on the Swine Flu and Bird flu. Why this "expert in his field" is still listened to is a mystery to me.

If you're talking about that first graph on the page, I think that it is not very helpful. Comparing total number of deaths can be misleading, especially for small countries like Sweden. If my state had a Coronavirus death rate as high as Sweden's 15,000 more people would be dead. Still not "millions", but it wouldn't be an ideal outcome.

Weren't his projections for deaths assuming we did a lockdown also much higher than the actual numbers?

Some other comment here said it was the other way around,they predicted 20k deaths in the UK with a lockdown and the death toll is 36,000.

Sweden is pitched as as some kind of example of handling the pandemic correctly, when their numbers[1] don't look good at all. From their numbers[2] 44% of people diagnosed ends up dead, implying they are way under tested or they have ridiculously deadly strain (I think it is the former). Because of that the most reliable indicator from them is number of deaths.

Now compare number of deaths with countries that reacted quickly, for example: South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and others.

[1] https://covidgraph.com/

[2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/sweden-highest-deat...

Sounds like we don't need to worry about that...government does all on its own...https://nypost.com/2020/04/28/more-blood-on-gov-cuomos-hands...

So this is your source? An opinion piece in a right leaning columnist in a biased NY Post, where author couldn't even help himself but include other unrelated tidbits, like how is Joe Biden and Tara Reade related to corona virus? There's nothing there to verify that even the characters in the story are real not to mention the story.

LOL this is the first I've ever heard of a "right leaning columnist" at the NY Post, opinion or not.

So what you are saying that a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch is not biased to the right?

It was sarcasm, but on second read I can see it didn't come off as such.

all you have to do is click on his name to see a list of his work.

https://nypost.com/author/michael-goodwin/

"Susan Rice's email exposes Team Obama's 'by the book' treachery"

"Shameful media still slamming Donald Trump during coronavirus crisis"

"Trump passes coronavirus test with flying colors"

"Deep State snakes slither back after FBI, CIA swamp draining"

yeah, definitely not a right leaning columnist.

This is just the first article I found at of many from many sources - I heard about it on MSNBC or somewhere like that when a reporter was asking him about it. This happened - it is a fact; the same thing occurred in Britain resulting in the same high death toll of elderly people. But bury your head - fine with me.

Are you serious? The orginally predicted death number was over 250,000 in Britain. How do you explain the numbers in Sweden which had a much different policy compared UK? Yes Sweden has a higher mortality/million pop rate, but estimates are showing that the number of people dying in UK from non-covid-19 health issues as a result of covid-19, (not going to hospital or getting treatment), would put those numbers on par.

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