Who funds this ****.
Serious question. Guys, listen, you’ve tried really hard, but you’re not good at this. Your schizophrenic up and down predictions from spring onward are beyond silly at this point. You’re off the rails loony birds just throwing darts. Perhaps your funds can go towards tuition reimbursement at U Dub. You’re fired.
> Our model update this week forecasts that the US will reach nearly 317,000
#COVID19 deaths by Dec. 1. That's up from our forecast last week by 7k.
As we speak (Sunday Oct 18, 2020), the US has a Covid death toll of 224,776. Subtracting from 317,000, we get that the IHME predicts another 92,224 Covid deaths by December 1st. That's equivalent to an average of 2,096 deaths per day over the next 44 days.
The current daily average US Covid death rate (smoothed over two weeks in which it was nearly linear) is 757 deaths per day. In order to move from an average of 757 per day to an average of 2,096 per day, it would have to end up at a daily rate of 3,435 deaths per day on December 1. In other words, daily US Covid deaths would have to increase by a factor of 4.537 X between now and 44 days later.
This IHME conjecture (of hitting 317,000 deaths by December 1st) is thus mathematically insane! That is, its projection is insanely high. The IHME model is not science based, but rather, it's insanity based.
> If mask wearing in public increases to 95%, more than 67,000 lives could be saved.
Under this sub-prediction, that reduces (from the IHME primary prediction) the predicted additional US Covid deaths by December 1st from 92,224 to a smaller 25,224. The latter translates to 573 US Covid deaths per day, on average, over the 44-day period from now to December 1st. That's a lowering from the current 757 per day. And actually, that's not too far off from reality, given that these predictions were made in August (and I have the advantage of predicting from an October perspective).
From my experience (limited to only one city in one state) we already have 95% of the people wearing masks in public places. So really, their second proposition of "if mask wearing in public inceases to 95%" is already true. Maybe other states are less religious than mine about masks. So I don't know how we're going to get the average Covid deaths per day reduced down to a net-smaller-by 183 deaths-per-day just due to additional mask-wearing, when nearly all are already wearing masks, and under those conditions the deaths per day has been going strictly sideways for the last 3 weeks. Now perhaps the disastrous IHME predictions were predicated on very little mask wearing, and the fact that we have worn masks fairly consistently, has nudged us closer to their with-masks prediction - and if so, then my earlier prediction that their model was now +/-10% was close to true.
But taking the IHME projections at face value, I could agree with the latter (lower) death-rate trajectory under one major additional condition, namely that instantaneously everyone in America were provided with an N-95 mask to wear (instead of the weak cloth masks). That could provide such an improvement. But many of us have been clamoring for N-95 masks for months now, and the N-95 supply chain still seems to have not caught up to demand. So no dice - we will be going sideways in daily deaths for the foreseeable future, since there's very little room for improvement in mask usage when it's already at 95% in a lot of states.
> Who funds this ****.
In a word, Bill Gates.
The IHME is a project that supposedly involves about 80 PhD researchers (on a part-time basis). Plus probably some computer programmers and software architects to make modifications to the code. The majority of funding comes from Bill Gates or his foundation.
Now many months ago, I was satisfied to simply poke major fun of the IHME model since its short-term (on the order of a month or so out) predictions were accurate to +/-25% whereas my simplistic model was accurate to about +/-1%. You can find these results scattered among the posts in this thread. Just for the record, I do not have a PhD degree in epidemiology (or any other field) but rather a bachelors' degree plus a lifetime of continuing education, and Bill Gates hasn't given me a dime.
The IHME model all of a sudden got a lot more accurate a few months ago, being (at that time, by my estimate) improved to about +/-10% accuracy. Then all of a sudden its predictions went way wacky again, such that its most current predictions are so totally wacky that (quoting them) Biden implicitly claimed that Covid deaths might double in less than 3 months (this was at the first debate). It looks like the sole purpose of the IHME model at this point in time is to act as a (partly) credible source of lies for Joe Biden to quote.
What this says to me (that is, the fact that the IHME model is now so wacky that it makes a mockery of the scientific method - if anyone still believes that IHME used the scientific method in any way/shape/form in developing its current model) is that the IHME model is not a scientific model at all. Rather, it can only be a bunch of scientists and computer jocks who have prostituted themselves to kissing Bill Gates ass, politically speaking.
That is, the only rational conclusion I can come to is that Bill Gates gives them some target numbers that their model must hit, all based on politically motivated goals set by Bill Gates himself, and then his flunkies go to work to tweak their BS IHME model to hit that arbitrary political goal.
That's simply the only way that the IHME model can be as insane as I have proven it to be, above. I mean, seriously, IHME makes even Osterholm look semi-honest.
> Serious question. Guys, listen, you’ve tried really hard, but you’re not good at this. Your schizophrenic up and down predictions from spring onward are beyond silly at this point. You’re off the rails loony birds just throwing darts. Perhaps your funds can go towards tuition reimbursement at U Dub. You’re fired.
Agree completely. But good luck firing Bill Gates.
