In an episode of The Simpsons, Professor Frink warns that the “Itchy & Scratchy Land” robots will inevitably run amok, but, “According to my calculations, the robots won’t go berserk for at least 24 hours”. Whereupon the robots immediately go beserk.
“Oh, I forgot to er, carry the one,” mutters Frink.
Popular media love to parrot the mantra “trust the science!” as if scientists were lab-coated high priests uttering incontrovertible words of divine wisdom. But, while science may the most reliable method of ascertaining facts, it is not infallible. Indeed, the fact that it can be proved wrong, at least in principle, is a foundational tenet of science.
When it comes to making predictions, especially, scientists are often very, very wrong.
A scientist who warned that the coronavirus would kill 500,000 people in the United Kingdom has revised the estimate to roughly 20,000 people or fewer.
That’s one hell of an “oopsie”. Overestimating the impact of a pandemic by 25 times is the sort of scientific overconfidence that has consequences. Big consequences. Whole economies have been shut down on the basis of such scientific scaremongering.
Scientist and Imperial College author Neil Ferguson said Wednesday that the coronavirus death toll is unlikely to exceed 20,000 and could be much lower, according to New Scientist. He added that he is “reasonably confident” that Britain’s health system can handle the burden of treating coronavirus patients.
“There will be some areas that are extremely stressed, but we are reasonably confident — which is all we can be at the current time — that at the national level we will be within capacity,” Ferguson said.
washingtonexaminer.com/news/imperial-college-scientist-who-predicted-500k-coronavirus-deaths-in-uk-revises-to-20k-or-less
To put it into perspective, 20,000 deaths would be somewhat more than a bad year of seasonal influenza in the UK but would be absolutely unlikely to cause wholesale lockdowns of the country.
Even Ferguson acknowledges the huge toll the reaction to the Chinese Virus is wreaking.
Ferguson said the current strategy was intended to keep transmission of the virus at low levels until a vaccine was available. Experts say that could take 12 to 18 months and Ferguson acknowledged it was impractical to keep the UK in lockdown for so long, especially because of the impact on the economy. “We’ll be paying for this year for decades to come,” he said.
newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/
“We,” he says. Meaning: you. The taxpaying suckers whose jobs have been obliterated, businesses shut down, and savings plundered, to pay for this panic. As always, academics will remain blithely insulated from the consequences of their bad advice.
Meanwhile:
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK[…]
They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.
gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid
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