Mr Drummond,
I’ve seen your latest graphs on Twitter (which I don’t normally use or else I’d ask you this there).
If they show deaths up to 27th of March, a date when there had been approx. 1,000 CV19 deaths, then won’t future graphs actually show something significant considering that deaths have topped 6,000 in the eleven following days? That kind of figure will surely give a big spike, will it not?
My response:
Matt, it would be extremely astonishing if there wasn’t a visible spike, seeing as we’ve turned into a police state, sitting inside under house arrest while the economy goes down the pan. Even I have been expecting an increase in deaths and then a fading out as spring takes hold, so even I have been surprised to see nothing at all in the graphs so far.
But it doesn’t look like we’re going to see Armageddon in the figures for the coming weeks, those numbers you’re talking about just aren’t large enough. 6000 in 11 days is 545 a day, but over 1500 are normally dying every day at this time of year, and quite a lot of those 545 are not going to be additional deaths, but people who would have died of something soon anyway. (Also, the Covid-19 figures includes some people who didn’t die of Covid-19.) So I wouldn’t expect the coming graphs to be crap-your-pants scary.
In other words, it would be incredible if we can’t see Covid-19 in the next few sets of graphs. I’m expecting we will. But will they show a once-in-a-century mass killer? Not looking like that so far.
But anyway I am on Toby Young’s side. Even if Neil Ferguson was right about the number of deaths, that doesn’t justify what we are doing to the economy and society. I’d rather take my chances with the disease than live in a police state with a ruined economy. I don’t want my children, who face virtually zero risk from this disease, to have their futures blighted.
9 thoughts on “What can we expect from the weeks 14 and 15 graphs?”
Brilliant work. I’d only say remember Ferguson initially estimated 500000 additional deaths and that was entire rational for shut down. Let’s not let him get away with his recalibration.
Fergoids claim is that he already give his lowest figure as what the lockdown would reduce deaths to. Or it is a more accurate figure to which he added the lockdown so his masters could be seen to be doing something.
But HD is right. I hope the British people won’t put up with this crap much longer.
And having seen that it takes political dross two days to create a police state –some way must be found to limit their power. Even if that means drastic measures such as widespread ownership of firearms.
I can’t help feeling that Ferguson thought of a couple of numbers and then calibrated his model to produce them. 500,000 and the much publicised 250,000 are just too convenient round numbers for it to be otherwise. He might have had more credibility projecting say 643,000 +/-100,000 and 227,000 +/- 50,000 instead.
Even joe public will get motivated when cottoning on to being sold a pup and being skint as a result, coupled with fergo et al in ivory towers. If said scenario transpires as correct , it aint gonna be pretty.)
Look at the total number of deaths so far this year. Then compare those total with an average of recent previous years. So far, in early April, there has been no increase in the overall total compared to recent years. Some might say, therefore, that nothing much has happened, yet. Or, others, might say it was yet another scam ?
“Fergoids claim is that he already give his lowest figure as what the lockdown would reduce deaths to”.
Yes, “I already gave you my very best offer. If I go any lower, you will be throwing my wife and children out on the street and I shall have to go sans culottes”.
Which, to anyone accustomed to haggling, means “Divide my offer by 15 and you’ll have a fair price”.
@Hector
The Spike
Graph shows a delayed spike in 2020 and slightly higher than 2017 and 2018
imo nothing to be concerned about so far
I wonder what psychological health effects Project You Will Die has on those infected. Same on the Feb low initial winter deaths spike – was this due to peeps not worrying about seasonal Flu as MSM not inducing usual fear about it?
Also, Pcar, that spike is based on Euromomo’s ‘delay-corrected’ figures, rather than real figures, and I’m not convinced about those. I’ve e-mailed Euromomo to ask them to provide more info on whether it’s just their algorithm which is based on past data, or whether they have advance notice of incoming figures, but they haven’t got back.
Let’s remember that Ferguson’s model is thousands of lines of undocumented computer code. That implies it’s been subjected to far less rigorous software engineering and validation than software which deals with your bank account. Unless Ferguson can provided detailed audit information of his testing and validation it’s not unreasonable to assume his model’s output might be worthless.
Comments are closed.