Incucurate Virus Models Are Panicking Officials Into Ill-Advised Lockdowns

[HARDCORE]

3-26-2020

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following column from Thefederalist.com’s Madeline Osburn, virus models about the infection, hospitalization and fatality rates of the Chinese coronavirus keep getting downgraded:

Inaccurate virus models are panicking officials into ill-advised lockdowns

By Madeline Osburn

As U.S. state and local officials halt the economy and quarantine their communities over the Wuhan virus crisis, one would hope our leaders were making such major decisions based on well-sourced data and statistical analysis. That is not the case.

A scan of statements made by media, state governors, local leaders, county judges, and more show many relying on the same source, an online mapping tool called COVID Act Now. The website says it is “built to enable political leaders to quickly make decisions in their Coronavirus response informed by best available data and modeling.”

An interactive map provides users a catastrophic forecast for each state, should they wait to implement COVID Act Now’s suggested strict measures to “flatten the curve.” But a closer look at how many of COVID Act Now’s predictions have already fallen short, and how they became a ubiquitous resource across the country overnight, suggests something more sinister.

The daunting phrase, the “point of no return,” is the same talking point being repeated by government officials justifying their shelter-in-place orders and filling local news headlines.
Democrats are not going to waste such a rich political opportunity as a global pandemic. Americans already witnessed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats attempt to take advantage of an economic recession with a pipe-dream relief bill this week. Projects like COVID Act Now are another attempt to play the same political games, but with help from unknown, behind-the-scenes Democratic activists instead.

Our community leaders, the mayors and the city councils, deserve better than to be swindled by a handful Silicon Valley tech bros. Our governors and state officials deserve better data and analysis than a Democratic activists’ model that doesn’t adjust for important geographical factors like population density or temperature. Americans and their families deserve better than to be jobless, hopeless, and quarantined because of a single website’s inaccurate and hyperbolic hospitalization models.

To view online: https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25...sed-lockdowns/

[reconeil]

Madeline Osborn makes many good points about politicians' recent pandemic hysteria.

Maybe all: "The Sky is Falling" type politicos, press/media and; "Talking heads" should look up America's usual mortality rate, before the cure destroys US (both ways) beyond repair? I did.

Whatever,...here are some usual yearly numbers to ponder.

"Annual death rate
Data are for the U.S. Number of deaths: 2,744,248. Death rate: 849.3 deaths per 100,000 population. Life expectancy: 78.6 years. Infant Mortality rate: 5.87 deaths per 1,000 live births."

Given such numbers, one could quite easily state that currently America also has An Overall Death Pandemic. Don't you think?

Neil