40,000 Corona Deaths. What The Experts Predicted

[Gromit]

UK corona deaths are mow above 40,000 (some claim 50,000 is the true figure). I thought it would be interesting to look up what Imperial College London predicted would happen.

After initially saying 500,000 would die in the UK, and rapidly amending that to 260,000, they settled on a much lower figure.

25 March
//Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London gave evidence today to the UK’s parliamentary select committee on science and technology as part of an inquiry into the nation’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
He said that UK deaths from the disease are now unlikely to exceed 20,000, and could be much lower. //

28 March.
// According to Imperial College London’s new predictions, Britain is on course for around 5,700 deaths - significantly lower than the 260,000 once predicted - leading to them to suggest that the government’s strategy is working. //

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but these predictions were laughably massively wrong.

We have the second highest number of deaths in the world, and the Government must be culpable, but were they misled by the dodgy science ?

[ToraToraTora]

no

[woofgang]

why MUST the government be culpable?

[vulcan42]

As woofgang asks, why must the government be culpable? The World Heath Organisation has now changed their advice regarding face masks and nobody bats an eyelid. Yet when our government changes its advice they are called incompetent. If governments don't accept the advice of the scientific experts, who do they turn to?

[Old_Geezer]

Prediction is difficult, one's trust in "experts" guesses should be tailored due to knowing that were predicting that accurate they'd all be billionaires from playing the stock market, or picking the lottery numbers every week. And the weather forcast would always be (rain)spot on. One can only go along with the people's best guess and adjust that guess during the course of events, as new data is collected.

[Gromit]

Woofgang,
The virus is indiscriminate. It is not seeking out and killing more British people than anyone else. The fact that we have this appalling record, most deaths in Europe, second highest in the world, means that our leaders got something terribly wrong. They did, or didn’t do something, that made us more susceptible to the virus, than our neighbours were.

[woofgang]

Gromit, you don't KNOW that...for the N'th time correlation does not mean causation.

[Gromit]

OG,
5,700 and 40,261+ is a very wide difference. It is farcically wrong.

If Neil Ferguson hadn’t quit SAGE (Ironically for breaking lockdown rules), then passing the 40K mark would surely have been a good excuse for dispensing with his services.
As it is, the Imperial College modellers still have the ear of the Government despite their poor record.

[fiction-factory]

Can you say what we did wrong- apart from things most countries got wrong such a shortages of PPE. Yes we were with hindsight too late in locking down and yes we didn't have enough testing (presumably we couldn't get hold of tests) and maybe we didn't stop flights in early enough- but can that explain the figures? Can you give a couple of examples of what we did that was appalling that would explain our dreadful deaths figure.
Maybe being unlucky was a factor too. or our age/BAME profile. Or London being a global hub
Besides, our death figure may be 2nd highest in the world but when adjusted for population size we are doing better than Belgium and are on a par with Italy and Spain

[Old_Geezer]

It is farcically wrong with hindsight. It seemed as good a guess as any other at the time.

[Gromit]

Woofgang

I know that 40,261+ have died.
I know that 213 other countries have had less fatalities.
So I will ask you why do you think the UK figure is very high ?

[fiction-factory]

This was one model. SAGE looks at all the models and draws a conclusion. Without Ferguson's first model we wouldn't have locked down- it was that that shocked the cabinet/COBR into action

[fiction-factory]

>So I will ask you why do you think the UK figure is very high ?

We could turn it round and ask you why.

No-one knows really. Lots of factors including bad luck but no one clear reason that stands out

[jno]

I think Britain did many right things, but weeks too late. (Quarantine for new arrivals, for instance.) Other countries are easing lockdown measures because they imposed them quickly and have now got infections down to a manageable figure. Britain isn't in a comparable situation yet.

Britain is the world's 21st most populous country (I wouldn't swear all these report to the same standards), yet second on the list of deaths. Something is badly out of kilter there.

[fiction-factory]

Mmm. Well Sweden didn't do the right things yet is doing slightly better than us. So I am sure there must be some other factors than just flights and timing of lockdown. Germany seems to have done well so we should look at them, but really we are pretty much in line with Italy and Spain (although ours are not falling as fast so the gap will widen, I accept that

[Gromit]

[This lot seem to be a lot closer than Imperial College]

10th April
According to a study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle released yesterday, the UK could be the European country worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, suffering a death toll over 37,494 by August.
The IHME, which produces the Global Burden of Disease study, believes that deaths in the UK will peak be 37,494 deaths in the UK by 4 August, although it said the figure could be between 26,000 and 62,500.*

* This was a revised number of their earlier 66,000 prediction a fortnight earlier.

[ToraToraTora]

I see now that this post is just a vehicle for another anti British rant from Gromit.

[jim360]

IHME predictions have been all over the shop. At the time you even drew attention to how they were expecting the UK's deaths to exceed the US's.

What particularly about the science is "dodgy"? It isn't the modelling predictions because, in a sense, those are always expected to be wrong.

[naomi24]

I sometimes wonder why they bother.

[jim360]

Because nothing would ever get done if we were afraid of being wrong.

[Peter Pedant]

fifteen answer so not too much crap to wade froo

It is not seeking out and killing more British people than anyone else.
er our mortality IS one of the highest so - killing more Brits has a death knell about it

The CMO said 20 000 - and upper limit was 100 000
and we have got to 50 000
so we have not much to complain about

science isnt made dodgy because someone volunteers - "dat dodgy dat! really dodgy it is."

NJ ( bless him) was sticking his oar in - when Sweden was golden boy and you neednt do anything
and is now very quiet because as predicted ( ha pun intended) their mortality is as bad as ours

Ha Ha I must tell you - they got the Imp Coll model - a 'simple S-I-R' model of equations = and the swedes put in silly numbers. An equation is an equation and if you plug in 2 and get 18.5 on Monday and do the same on Tuesday it will spit out 18.5 - which may or may not ahve significance

and doing this the swedes got as they knew they would - 20 m deaths in the fjords in 2021 - and said "oo look everyone this model is crap!"

Now if the system of equation were a plastic teddy - what the swedes did was to fashion one paw as a V sign and the other paw stuffed down the teddy bears Y fronts - - whilst shouting this is what we thin of the London model !

[well it is satdy am and makes a change]