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Epidemiologist behind Imperial College coronavirus model revises model

36 points by r6203 6y ago

jtbayly 6y ago
I'd really like to see this discussed here. I've not seen anybody talking about this in the US. This is the guy behind the "highly-cited Imperial College London coronavirus model." And this is a major revision. It drops estimated deaths in the UK from 500,000 to "20,000 or far fewer." It also estimates that the UK will not run out of ICU beds in the process. The reason is that the transmissibility estimate has gone up, which implies that many more people have already had the virus than we realized. This, in turn, means that a much lower percentage are serious cases. It also means that we are much nearer to the peak than we thought. Edited to add: He also credits the lockdown in the UK, but if you look at the previous model of how this plays out even with a complete lockdown, you see that the vast majority of the change must come from the change in estimate of transmissibility.
- sgt101 6y ago
  >The reason is that the transmissibility estimate has gone up citation please. My understanding is that it's because of the policy intervention that his team advised.
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
    - sgt101 6y ago
      Ok - I read this : "He said that expected increases in National Health Service capacity and ongoing restrictions to people’s movements make him “reasonably confident” the health service can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in two or three weeks. UK deaths from the disease are now unlikely to exceed 20,000, he said, and could be much lower." and "This measure of how many other people a carrier usually infects is now believed to be just over three, he said, up from 2.5. “That adds more evidence to support the more intensive social distancing measures,” he said." So the article says EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU CLAIMED. This is disinformation.
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- jimhefferon 6y ago
  > It also estimates that the UK will not run out of ICU beds in the process. That'd be wonderful. But, doesn't that conflict with what we saw actually happen in Italy?
  - sunkenvicar 6y ago
    Florence Italy was home to Hug A Chinese National Day during the Chinese New Year when many Chinese people are allowed to travel globally. Hopefully fewer visited the UK and even fewer had close contact with the locals.
    - jimhefferon 6y ago
      > Hug A Chinese National Day A rational person can't possibly believe that this is the cause of their troubles, even if there were such a thing.
      - sunkenvicar 6y ago
        I agree it’s hard to believe such a thing existed and undoubtedly accelerated the spread of the Wuhan Virus. Many lives could have been saved if Italy embraced social distancing instead of virtue signalling. Proof: https://www.westernjournal.com/italian-mayor-starts-hug-chinese-campaign-weeks-later-entire-country-lockdown/ https://www.westernjournal.com/italian-mayor-starts-hug-chin...
  - lutorm 6y ago
    New York is close to getting there, too.
  - booboolayla 6y ago
    This. When a scientist claims Venice is going under water we shouldn't blindly trust their words, especially if Venice is still above water.
  - neaden 6y ago
    It does indeed, or what we are seeing in New York. I'm very skeptical of this, though it would of course be great news if it was true. I can't help but have whiplash from the fact that the UK seems to have gone from an attitude of we're going to be fine, to we're all going to die, to now it's going to be fine again. Edit: I think it is important to keep in mind that Italy's deaths per day are still going up. The growth has slowed and hopefully we are about to see the peak but it still hasn't come. Most western countries are on the same growth rate as Italy, there is no reason right now to think we won't see something similar happen all over the world.
- downshun 6y ago
  Can't help but ask the actuary question: are the covid19 deaths avoided worth the economic cost of the lockdown?
  - glofish 6y ago
    read what the report says: [...] coronavirus will probably kill under 20,000 people in the U.K. — more than 1/2 of whom would have died by the end of the year in any case [because] they were so old and sick [...]
  - LeoNatan25 6y ago
    Yes
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - downshun 6y ago
      http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html
    - Proziam 6y ago
      I want to agree with you, but I do have a concern about this point of view that I've yet to see addressed. Perhaps you or someone else can give some insight into your thinking. What about the deaths caused by the wrecked economy? Even putting things in simplistic terms, the 2008 crash is credited with 10,000 suicides. Following the chain of misery into homelessness, stress-induced illnesses, criminality (which leads to loss of life in multiple categories), and so forth leads me to question whether it is actually as black and white as people say it is. Currently, we're on track to make this economic catastrophe bigger than the 2008 crash. I don't want to imagine what the fallout is going to look like in the future, but I already know a lot of people who are out of work and scared. Mind you, I'm saying this as someone who has family in the 70+ high-risk category. I'm not oblivious to the value of human life. I am purely speculating about whether or not we're actually doing the right thing, and thinking about the consequences as thoroughly as we should.
  - 6y ago
- sjg007 6y ago
  What’s the evidence for widespread transmission already?
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    I wish there was some. Again, it's based on the change in R0. From another article[0]: "New data from the rest of Europe suggests that the outbreak is running faster than expected, said Ferguson. As a result, epidemiologists have revised their estimate of the reproduction number (R0) of the virus. This measure of how many other people a carrier usually infects is now believed to be just over three, he said, up from 2.5." [0]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
    - sjg007 6y ago
      An R0 of 3 is still catastrophic. It’s your whole nuclear family plus one. What was R0 before?
- luckydata 6y ago
  the new model reads like a bunch of politically motivated bullshit. The model is saying whatever the current Tory government needs it to say and seems divorced from what we can actually see on the ground.
- glofish 6y ago
  I always thought the Imperial model was ridiculously fatalistic, but this turnabout, and this quickly - that really surprised me.
- guscost 6y ago
  I've been mentioning this possibility here and getting in arguments over it for more than a week now. People don't have much of an appetite, it seems. My guess is that all the folks who were absolutely certain of a low R0 value and a high IFR, with 2% of the US population dying as a result, are not going to show up to acknowledge that they were wrong.
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sunkenvicar 6y ago
I hope he’s right.
triceratops 6y ago
"He said that expected increases in National Health Service capacity and ongoing restrictions to people’s movements make him “reasonably confident” the health service can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in two or three weeks. UK deaths from the disease are now unlikely to exceed 20,000, he said, and could be much lower."[1] So basically "Scientist revises model based on new conditions". Isn't that supposed to happen? A successful prevention is going to feel like failure. It's going to prompt questions like "was this worth all the panic, and tanking the economy?" Bodies are easy to count, deaths prevented are invisible. 1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/#ixzz6HpPqbiEF https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
- jtbayly 6y ago
  Not quite. You're claiming that this is all because of the lockdown, when it is quite clear that the biggest reason for the change is the changed estimate of R0. In other words, if this new R0 estimate is correct we were completely mislead about how big a deal this virus is, and comparisons to it "just" being like a bad flu year are more or less correct.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    But it seems like he's revising the R0 estimate upwards, rather than downwards. From the same article: "New data from the rest of Europe suggests that the outbreak is running faster than expected, said Ferguson. As a result, epidemiologists have revised their estimate of the reproduction number (R0) of the virus. This measure of how many other people a carrier usually infects is now believed to be just over three, he said, up from 2.5. “That adds more evidence to support the more intensive social distancing measures,” he said." https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/#ixzz6HpPqbiEF https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      Yeah, revising the R0 upwards is exactly what you would expect to result in a faster infection rate. This means that more people have already been infected and were fine, and that we are at the peak before herd immunity starts to drastically impact the R0 downwards.
guscost 6y ago
Another model that fits the UK data, even when assuming that half of the population has already been infected, which would mean that the disease is not nearly as dangerous as commonly thought: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/oxford-study-coronavirus-may-have-infected-half-of-u-k.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/oxford-study-coronav... By adjusting those two parameters (R0 and IFR) in opposite directions, you can come up with a whole gamut of scenarios that match the evidence pretty well.
- jsnell 6y ago
  Sure, that model shows that there are multiple ways to fit the model parameters to account for the first 14 days of fatalities. But we have a lot more real-world data available that directly contradicts any scenario where half the population is already infected. I'm just disgusted that the authors are now saying it was just an abstract demonstration of different scenarios, and pretending they didn't actually make the claims about the real world that they did.
  - guscost 6y ago
    ...is all of that real-world data from Lombardy? If not, does it rely on circular logic? I’ve seen evidence in both categories, but not much else.
    - jsnell 6y ago
      Sure, here's some to start with. 1. Any situation where the testing isn't limited to just the most critically ill showing much lower infection percentages than this model would predict. A lot of these are tests of every person in a risky situation, whether they had symptoms or not: E.g. the evacuation flights from Iran to China tested every passenger and showed a 3% infection rate. T The village of Vo testing their entire population twice soon after starting a Covid quarantine, with a 3% infection rate. Others were testing large amounts of people with no particular reason they had Covid, but still with a skewed sample: The Swedish sentinel testing of random people with any kind of flu symptoms (1.5% of people with flu symptoms testing as positive for Covid, vs. 30% testing positive for Influenza A/B). Iceland testing IIRC a volunteer 1.5% of their population whether they had symptoms or not, and having something like a 1% infection rate. The thing all of these have in common is that they happened at a time in their relative epidemics where this model should have predicted the majority of the population was currently infected. In fact, it's basically impossible to explain any testing results, since even when they're biased to cases where Covid is strongly suspected, the ratio of positives is so low. If we test the 1000 of people most suspected of having Covid right now, and get 10% positives, how can it possibly be the case that half the non-suspicious population are carriers at the time of that test? 2. If herd immunity kicks in 14 days after the first death as implied by this model, why haven't any of the epidemics died down by now? Italy is on what, day 30? 3. How does a super infectious but low mortality model explain the geographic clustering of deaths? Sure, the geographic clustering of known cases could be explained by testing bias. But deaths don't have that bias. 4. Observed high CFRs in limited populations where we know the infection rate was high. E.g. Diamond Princess at what 1.4%, and still another 2% in critical condition. How many top ranking Iranian leaders died in short order of Covid, and how does that fit in with a mortality rate of 0.01%? Or the cases where most of the patients of a health care facility or nursing home got infected?
wbronitsky 6y ago
So we are normalizing rightwing propaganda sites on HN now? Seeing an article from a Ben Shapiro fronted site on the HN front page is frightening. I need a new place to get my information.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  If you would prefer to ignore the fact that the hugely influential epidemiologists responsible for the recommendations we are currently following have changed their recommendations, go for it.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - wbronitsky 6y ago
    We can all get our information directly from the source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
- yters 6y ago
  does hn avoid normalizing leftwing propaganda? if not, why make a special effort for other propaganda sources?
- sunkenvicar 6y ago
  Ben Shapiro is the face of Conservative Inc. and pre-Trump mainstream Republicanism. (Think Mitt Romney) He’s an open-borders centrist who loves globalism.
  - wbronitsky 6y ago
    This reply sounds suspiciously bigoted and was posted incredibly quickly. I do understand dog-whistles. I need to get out of here before someone accuses me of controlling hollywood. this place went to the rats Edit: after taking a quick look, it would seem that this user comes to HN to post bigoted arguments with little to no facts, just hate. it seems like HN is totally ok with this user continuing to spread hate.
martingoodson 6y ago
This is misinformation. This is not a major revision in any sense. Read the Imperial College paper. The estimates were different between the 'mitigation' and 'supression' strategy. The UK have now changed strategy to 'supression'. Hence the different prediction.
- sgt101 6y ago
  This is my reading. I believe that this is correct.
- tyingq 6y ago
  Now at the bottom of the article... "Correction: The original title of this article incorrectly suggested that Neil Ferguson stated his initial model was wrong. The article has been revised to make clear that he provided a downgraded projection given the new data and current mitigation steps."
- jtbayly 6y ago
  I've read the Imperial College Paper. Transmissibility is a major change [0]. The original paper says we are only just at the beginning of the time we will have to spend quarantined over the next 12-18 months, off and on. With the new transmissibility estimate, it would mean that we are a few weeks away from the peak and then done with this. If you can show me I'm wrong, please do. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > Transmissibility is a major change [0] I'm not sure you read your own link correctly. "New data from the rest of Europe suggests that the outbreak is running faster than expected, said Ferguson. As a result, epidemiologists have revised their estimate of the reproduction number (R0) of the virus. This measure of how many other people a carrier usually infects is now believed to be just over three, he said, up from 2.5. “That adds more evidence to support the more intensive social distancing measures,” he said."
imeron 6y ago
Bill Gates on the Imperial College model: 'Fortunately it appears the parameters used in that model were too negative. ... Models are only as good as the assumptions put into them' https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/fkuojny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...
- guscost 6y ago
  That's just fine and dandy then, I didn't lose my job, and Bill Gates doesn't need to earn money. Un-fucking-believable.
nicois 6y ago
They claim half the population is already infected. So conduct a random sample, test 50 people and you would expect 25ish MTO be positive, with most showing no symptoms. If so, then herd immunity is indeed a thing. I have my doubts that the numbers would support this claim. And if so, then virtually everyone in Spain or Italy would already be a carrier. The fact that cases were linked to known arrivals also is evidence against this hypothesis : if a high proportion of carriers were unwitting and asymptomatic you would expect many of those diagnosed to not have a link to someone previously diagnosed.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  I agree with your doubts, and I can't make sense of 72% of tests in NY being negative. However, the test you need to run is an antibody test, since negative tests don't tell you whether you've already had it.
- PaulKeeble 6y ago
  Given the UK is now only testing those who turn up to a hospital and likely needing treatment and is still finding that about 15% of those are Sars-cov-19 50% in the wider population sounds exceptionally unlikely.
nicois 6y ago
I also believe the referenced article does not correctly convey what the original New Scientist article does: the original epidemiologist does not buy in completely to the new inferences, by my reading.
dr_faustus 6y ago
The theory that the virus has been spreading for months just makes no sense at all. By all accounts, COVID has a pretty quick progression and serious cases need to be hospitalized after about one week of symptoms or about two weeks after contraction. How come that the virus has infected millions and millions of people in the last months but none of them got seriously sick. And now all of a sudden, 1000s are dying. Unfortunatly, it seems that even researchers from reputable institutions are now just pulling numbers from their asses to grab some headlines.
- yters 6y ago
  Maybe they were dying before, but were categorized differently?
tandr 6y ago
Made me thinking - Is this the reason behind today's market's rally close to the end of the day?
sunnyP 6y ago
He tweeted some clarification. https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928 https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928
sathomasga 6y ago
This is flat out wrong. There is no revision at all. To quote [Neil Ferguson himself](https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928 https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928): I think it would be helpful if I cleared up some confusion that has emerged in recent days. Some have interpreted my evidence to a UK parliamentary committee as indicating we have substantially revised our assessments of the potential mortality impact of COVID-19 This is not the case. Indeed, if anything, our latest estimates suggest that the virus is slightly more transmissible than we previously thought. Our lethality estimates remain unchanged. My evidence to Parliament referred to the deaths we assess might occur in the UK in the presence of the very intensive social distancing and other public health interventions now in place. Without those controls, our assessment remains that the UK would see the scale of deaths reported in our study (namely, up to approximately 500 thousand).

36 points by r6203 6y ago

I'd really like to see this discussed here. I've not seen anybody talking about this in the US. This is the guy behind the "highly-cited Imperial College London coronavirus model." And this is a major revision. It drops estimated deaths in the UK from 500,000 to "20,000 or far fewer." It also estimates that the UK will not run out of ICU beds in the process. The reason is that the transmissibility estimate has gone up, which implies that many more people have already had the virus than we realized. This, in turn, means that a much lower percentage are serious cases. It also means that we are much nearer to the peak than we thought. Edited to add: He also credits the lockdown in the UK, but if you look at the previous model of how this plays out even with a complete lockdown, you see that the vast majority of the change must come from the change in estimate of transmissibility.

sgt101 6y ago
>The reason is that the transmissibility estimate has gone up citation please. My understanding is that it's because of the policy intervention that his team advised.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
  - sgt101 6y ago
    Ok - I read this : "He said that expected increases in National Health Service capacity and ongoing restrictions to people’s movements make him “reasonably confident” the health service can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in two or three weeks. UK deaths from the disease are now unlikely to exceed 20,000, he said, and could be much lower." and "This measure of how many other people a carrier usually infects is now believed to be just over three, he said, up from 2.5. “That adds more evidence to support the more intensive social distancing measures,” he said." So the article says EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU CLAIMED. This is disinformation.
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jimhefferon 6y ago
> It also estimates that the UK will not run out of ICU beds in the process. That'd be wonderful. But, doesn't that conflict with what we saw actually happen in Italy?
- sunkenvicar 6y ago
  Florence Italy was home to Hug A Chinese National Day during the Chinese New Year when many Chinese people are allowed to travel globally. Hopefully fewer visited the UK and even fewer had close contact with the locals.
  - jimhefferon 6y ago
    > Hug A Chinese National Day A rational person can't possibly believe that this is the cause of their troubles, even if there were such a thing.
    - sunkenvicar 6y ago
      I agree it’s hard to believe such a thing existed and undoubtedly accelerated the spread of the Wuhan Virus. Many lives could have been saved if Italy embraced social distancing instead of virtue signalling. Proof: https://www.westernjournal.com/italian-mayor-starts-hug-chinese-campaign-weeks-later-entire-country-lockdown/ https://www.westernjournal.com/italian-mayor-starts-hug-chin...
- lutorm 6y ago
  New York is close to getting there, too.
- booboolayla 6y ago
  This. When a scientist claims Venice is going under water we shouldn't blindly trust their words, especially if Venice is still above water.
- neaden 6y ago
  It does indeed, or what we are seeing in New York. I'm very skeptical of this, though it would of course be great news if it was true. I can't help but have whiplash from the fact that the UK seems to have gone from an attitude of we're going to be fine, to we're all going to die, to now it's going to be fine again. Edit: I think it is important to keep in mind that Italy's deaths per day are still going up. The growth has slowed and hopefully we are about to see the peak but it still hasn't come. Most western countries are on the same growth rate as Italy, there is no reason right now to think we won't see something similar happen all over the world.
downshun 6y ago
Can't help but ask the actuary question: are the covid19 deaths avoided worth the economic cost of the lockdown?
- glofish 6y ago
  read what the report says: [...] coronavirus will probably kill under 20,000 people in the U.K. — more than 1/2 of whom would have died by the end of the year in any case [because] they were so old and sick [...]
- LeoNatan25 6y ago
  Yes
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  - downshun 6y ago
    http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html
  - Proziam 6y ago
    I want to agree with you, but I do have a concern about this point of view that I've yet to see addressed. Perhaps you or someone else can give some insight into your thinking. What about the deaths caused by the wrecked economy? Even putting things in simplistic terms, the 2008 crash is credited with 10,000 suicides. Following the chain of misery into homelessness, stress-induced illnesses, criminality (which leads to loss of life in multiple categories), and so forth leads me to question whether it is actually as black and white as people say it is. Currently, we're on track to make this economic catastrophe bigger than the 2008 crash. I don't want to imagine what the fallout is going to look like in the future, but I already know a lot of people who are out of work and scared. Mind you, I'm saying this as someone who has family in the 70+ high-risk category. I'm not oblivious to the value of human life. I am purely speculating about whether or not we're actually doing the right thing, and thinking about the consequences as thoroughly as we should.
- 6y ago
sjg007 6y ago
What’s the evidence for widespread transmission already?
- jtbayly 6y ago
  I wish there was some. Again, it's based on the change in R0. From another article[0]: "New data from the rest of Europe suggests that the outbreak is running faster than expected, said Ferguson. As a result, epidemiologists have revised their estimate of the reproduction number (R0) of the virus. This measure of how many other people a carrier usually infects is now believed to be just over three, he said, up from 2.5." [0]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
  - sjg007 6y ago
    An R0 of 3 is still catastrophic. It’s your whole nuclear family plus one. What was R0 before?
luckydata 6y ago
the new model reads like a bunch of politically motivated bullshit. The model is saying whatever the current Tory government needs it to say and seems divorced from what we can actually see on the ground.
glofish 6y ago
I always thought the Imperial model was ridiculously fatalistic, but this turnabout, and this quickly - that really surprised me.
guscost 6y ago
I've been mentioning this possibility here and getting in arguments over it for more than a week now. People don't have much of an appetite, it seems. My guess is that all the folks who were absolutely certain of a low R0 value and a high IFR, with 2% of the US population dying as a result, are not going to show up to acknowledge that they were wrong.
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sunkenvicar 6y ago

I hope he’s right.

triceratops 6y ago

"He said that expected increases in National Health Service capacity and ongoing restrictions to people’s movements make him “reasonably confident” the health service can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in two or three weeks. UK deaths from the disease are now unlikely to exceed 20,000, he said, and could be much lower."[1] So basically "Scientist revises model based on new conditions". Isn't that supposed to happen? A successful prevention is going to feel like failure. It's going to prompt questions like "was this worth all the panic, and tanking the economy?" Bodies are easy to count, deaths prevented are invisible. 1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/#ixzz6HpPqbiEF https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...

jtbayly 6y ago
Not quite. You're claiming that this is all because of the lockdown, when it is quite clear that the biggest reason for the change is the changed estimate of R0. In other words, if this new R0 estimate is correct we were completely mislead about how big a deal this virus is, and comparisons to it "just" being like a bad flu year are more or less correct.
- triceratops 6y ago
  But it seems like he's revising the R0 estimate upwards, rather than downwards. From the same article: "New data from the rest of Europe suggests that the outbreak is running faster than expected, said Ferguson. As a result, epidemiologists have revised their estimate of the reproduction number (R0) of the virus. This measure of how many other people a carrier usually infects is now believed to be just over three, he said, up from 2.5. “That adds more evidence to support the more intensive social distancing measures,” he said." https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/#ixzz6HpPqbiEF https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    Yeah, revising the R0 upwards is exactly what you would expect to result in a faster infection rate. This means that more people have already been infected and were fine, and that we are at the peak before herd immunity starts to drastically impact the R0 downwards.

guscost 6y ago

Another model that fits the UK data, even when assuming that half of the population has already been infected, which would mean that the disease is not nearly as dangerous as commonly thought: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/oxford-study-coronavirus-may-have-infected-half-of-u-k.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/oxford-study-coronav... By adjusting those two parameters (R0 and IFR) in opposite directions, you can come up with a whole gamut of scenarios that match the evidence pretty well.

jsnell 6y ago
Sure, that model shows that there are multiple ways to fit the model parameters to account for the first 14 days of fatalities. But we have a lot more real-world data available that directly contradicts any scenario where half the population is already infected. I'm just disgusted that the authors are now saying it was just an abstract demonstration of different scenarios, and pretending they didn't actually make the claims about the real world that they did.
- guscost 6y ago
  ...is all of that real-world data from Lombardy? If not, does it rely on circular logic? I’ve seen evidence in both categories, but not much else.
  - jsnell 6y ago
    Sure, here's some to start with. 1. Any situation where the testing isn't limited to just the most critically ill showing much lower infection percentages than this model would predict. A lot of these are tests of every person in a risky situation, whether they had symptoms or not: E.g. the evacuation flights from Iran to China tested every passenger and showed a 3% infection rate. T The village of Vo testing their entire population twice soon after starting a Covid quarantine, with a 3% infection rate. Others were testing large amounts of people with no particular reason they had Covid, but still with a skewed sample: The Swedish sentinel testing of random people with any kind of flu symptoms (1.5% of people with flu symptoms testing as positive for Covid, vs. 30% testing positive for Influenza A/B). Iceland testing IIRC a volunteer 1.5% of their population whether they had symptoms or not, and having something like a 1% infection rate. The thing all of these have in common is that they happened at a time in their relative epidemics where this model should have predicted the majority of the population was currently infected. In fact, it's basically impossible to explain any testing results, since even when they're biased to cases where Covid is strongly suspected, the ratio of positives is so low. If we test the 1000 of people most suspected of having Covid right now, and get 10% positives, how can it possibly be the case that half the non-suspicious population are carriers at the time of that test? 2. If herd immunity kicks in 14 days after the first death as implied by this model, why haven't any of the epidemics died down by now? Italy is on what, day 30? 3. How does a super infectious but low mortality model explain the geographic clustering of deaths? Sure, the geographic clustering of known cases could be explained by testing bias. But deaths don't have that bias. 4. Observed high CFRs in limited populations where we know the infection rate was high. E.g. Diamond Princess at what 1.4%, and still another 2% in critical condition. How many top ranking Iranian leaders died in short order of Covid, and how does that fit in with a mortality rate of 0.01%? Or the cases where most of the patients of a health care facility or nursing home got infected?

wbronitsky 6y ago

So we are normalizing rightwing propaganda sites on HN now? Seeing an article from a Ben Shapiro fronted site on the HN front page is frightening. I need a new place to get my information.

jtbayly 6y ago
If you would prefer to ignore the fact that the hugely influential epidemiologists responsible for the recommendations we are currently following have changed their recommendations, go for it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- wbronitsky 6y ago
  We can all get our information directly from the source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
yters 6y ago
does hn avoid normalizing leftwing propaganda? if not, why make a special effort for other propaganda sources?
sunkenvicar 6y ago
Ben Shapiro is the face of Conservative Inc. and pre-Trump mainstream Republicanism. (Think Mitt Romney) He’s an open-borders centrist who loves globalism.
- wbronitsky 6y ago
  This reply sounds suspiciously bigoted and was posted incredibly quickly. I do understand dog-whistles. I need to get out of here before someone accuses me of controlling hollywood. this place went to the rats Edit: after taking a quick look, it would seem that this user comes to HN to post bigoted arguments with little to no facts, just hate. it seems like HN is totally ok with this user continuing to spread hate.

martingoodson 6y ago

This is misinformation. This is not a major revision in any sense. Read the Imperial College paper. The estimates were different between the 'mitigation' and 'supression' strategy. The UK have now changed strategy to 'supression'. Hence the different prediction.

sgt101 6y ago
This is my reading. I believe that this is correct.
tyingq 6y ago
Now at the bottom of the article... "Correction: The original title of this article incorrectly suggested that Neil Ferguson stated his initial model was wrong. The article has been revised to make clear that he provided a downgraded projection given the new data and current mitigation steps."
jtbayly 6y ago
I've read the Imperial College Paper. Transmissibility is a major change [0]. The original paper says we are only just at the beginning of the time we will have to spend quarantined over the next 12-18 months, off and on. With the new transmissibility estimate, it would mean that we are a few weeks away from the peak and then done with this. If you can show me I'm wrong, please do. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-intensive-care-units-for-coronavirus-expert-predicts/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238578-uk-has-enough-i...
- triceratops 6y ago
  > Transmissibility is a major change [0] I'm not sure you read your own link correctly. "New data from the rest of Europe suggests that the outbreak is running faster than expected, said Ferguson. As a result, epidemiologists have revised their estimate of the reproduction number (R0) of the virus. This measure of how many other people a carrier usually infects is now believed to be just over three, he said, up from 2.5. “That adds more evidence to support the more intensive social distancing measures,” he said."

imeron 6y ago

Bill Gates on the Imperial College model: 'Fortunately it appears the parameters used in that model were too negative. ... Models are only as good as the assumptions put into them' https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/fkuojny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...

guscost 6y ago
That's just fine and dandy then, I didn't lose my job, and Bill Gates doesn't need to earn money. Un-fucking-believable.

nicois 6y ago

They claim half the population is already infected. So conduct a random sample, test 50 people and you would expect 25ish MTO be positive, with most showing no symptoms. If so, then herd immunity is indeed a thing. I have my doubts that the numbers would support this claim. And if so, then virtually everyone in Spain or Italy would already be a carrier. The fact that cases were linked to known arrivals also is evidence against this hypothesis : if a high proportion of carriers were unwitting and asymptomatic you would expect many of those diagnosed to not have a link to someone previously diagnosed.

jtbayly 6y ago
I agree with your doubts, and I can't make sense of 72% of tests in NY being negative. However, the test you need to run is an antibody test, since negative tests don't tell you whether you've already had it.
PaulKeeble 6y ago
Given the UK is now only testing those who turn up to a hospital and likely needing treatment and is still finding that about 15% of those are Sars-cov-19 50% in the wider population sounds exceptionally unlikely.

nicois 6y ago

I also believe the referenced article does not correctly convey what the original New Scientist article does: the original epidemiologist does not buy in completely to the new inferences, by my reading.

dr_faustus 6y ago

The theory that the virus has been spreading for months just makes no sense at all. By all accounts, COVID has a pretty quick progression and serious cases need to be hospitalized after about one week of symptoms or about two weeks after contraction. How come that the virus has infected millions and millions of people in the last months but none of them got seriously sick. And now all of a sudden, 1000s are dying. Unfortunatly, it seems that even researchers from reputable institutions are now just pulling numbers from their asses to grab some headlines.

yters 6y ago
Maybe they were dying before, but were categorized differently?

tandr 6y ago

Made me thinking - Is this the reason behind today's market's rally close to the end of the day?

sunnyP 6y ago

He tweeted some clarification. https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928 https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928

sathomasga 6y ago

This is flat out wrong. There is no revision at all. To quote [Neil Ferguson himself](https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928 https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294815200124928): I think it would be helpful if I cleared up some confusion that has emerged in recent days. Some have interpreted my evidence to a UK parliamentary committee as indicating we have substantially revised our assessments of the potential mortality impact of COVID-19 This is not the case. Indeed, if anything, our latest estimates suggest that the virus is slightly more transmissible than we previously thought. Our lethality estimates remain unchanged. My evidence to Parliament referred to the deaths we assess might occur in the UK in the presence of the very intensive social distancing and other public health interventions now in place. Without those controls, our assessment remains that the UK would see the scale of deaths reported in our study (namely, up to approximately 500 thousand).