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Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time

https://outline.com/cnvAS8 The Telegraph

Fortran. [:)] I programmed in that in the early 80s around the time of the commodore 64.

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time

https://outline.com/cnvAS8 The Telegraph

Fortran. [:)] I programmed in that in the early 80s around the time of the commodore 64.

The new and improved...

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time

https://outline.com/cnvAS8 The Telegraph

Fortran. [:)] I programmed in that in the early 80s around the time of the commodore 64.

The new and improved...

Ah Fortran, I learned that one too....and don't forget good old Basic. I liked Pascal better. When I got in the workforce I was trained in JCL (mainframe - Job Control Language) and a thing called Natural (used mostly in the Insurance sector, though I was Finance). Natural drove me nuts because you could define a variable anywhere in the code vs Pascal, which was very structured. Never learned any of the newer languages. Couldn't code a lick today.

This thread is beginning to wobble off course from the Subject "Corona virus".

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ORIGINAL: fcooke


I think a lot more people can succeed than currently are. I think a big part of that comes down to a quality education, which not enough people are getting for various reasons which I will leave alone to avoid going completely OT on the OT. Until recently in the US there was always a shortage of coders, nurses, etc.

I completely agree!

This is in fact veering more toward on this particular topic. I posted recently about one of the most successful efforts to fight Covid worldwide which is in a state in India, Kerala. The health minister, a former teacher, has instilled that education is a component of the health program. Literacy especially is at a high rate in the state due to her efforts, and she has completely squashed Covid transmission there by educating, testing, isolating and tracing.

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time

https://outline.com/cnvAS8 The Telegraph

Fortran. [:)] I programmed in that in the early 80s around the time of the commodore 64.

The new and improved...

Firstly this headline is misleading and false. It implies that lockdown is a mistake, that this model is the reason for lockdown, and that this model is flawed.

Are you concerned with coding, or lockdown, Lowpe? Didn't you already post on this, and we had a long back and forth about it? I read on this extensively at the time and posted virtually the same I'm posting here.

The reviews I read were all over the map, from very critical of the code to some that said just that it was a mess for anyone outside of its development group to understand but that it seemed to function just fine. I also read it was written in C, not Fortran.

Either way the critique of this particular study by Imperial is not really relevant now, as it was only a part of a group of studies and projections by experts that warned of dire consequences of not using some kind of social distancing and mitigation to control the spread of Covid.

As we've learned, if the US had listened to experts a week or two earlier many thousands of lives could have been spared in this first wave of the virus, so it's actually quite good, regardless, that something worried the top dog enough that he decided to listen to his own experts and set out social distancing guidelines.

Here is more on this topic for those who continue to point to the Imperial results as somehow the reason lockdowns occurred.

A spokesperson for the Imperial College COVID19 Response Team said: “The UK Government has never relied on a single disease model to inform decision-making. As has been repeatedly stated, decision-making around lockdown was based on a consensus view of the scientific evidence, including several modelling studies by different academic groups.

“Multiple groups using different models concluded that the pandemic would overwhelm the NHS and cause unacceptably high mortality in the absence of extreme social distancing measures. Within the Imperial research team we use several models of differing levels of complexity, all of which produce consistent results. We are working with a number of legitimate academic groups and technology companies to develop, test and further document the simulation code referred to. However, we reject the partisan reviews of a few clearly ideologically motivated commentators.

“Epidemiology is not a branch of computer science and the conclusions around lockdown rely not on any mathematical model but on the scientific consensus that COVID-19 is a highly transmissible virus with an infection fatality ratio exceeding 0.5pc in the UK.”

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time

https://outline.com/cnvAS8 The Telegraph

Fortran. [:)] I programmed in that in the early 80s around the time of the commodore 64.

Many of State run unemployment computer systems are programed in Cobol and they just are not built for he kind of volume being asked. Which means, its old, it works, but don't touch it. Anyway, Cobol was good for it's time but it doesn't scale well or easily. Some of those old Cobol Cowboys, if they are still around, are coming out of retirement to try and scale these systems. Not a quick process. I'm an old C and Assembler programmer. C can still be useful, but if you need an Assembler programmer something has gone horribly wrong

There is still a lot of old code out there, not always, or usually, well documented. And the talent pool to support or figure it out is getting smaller all the time. My wife knows Assembler, but she is pushing 60 and I am pretty sure she never wants to code again. The Hadoop/Big data angle is difficult. Many SW companies out there have platforms, but in my experience, you need a data engineer to work on the pool of data. An end user just cannot navigate it well.

"post Reagan" [8|]

Oh, FFS, don't start in on Ronaldus Magnus.

ORIGINAL: Orm

Can we please focus on the main topic only?

[:D] Good luck with that.

ORIGINAL: Admiral DadMan

This thread is beginning to wobble off course from the Subject "Corona virus".

Please institute a course correction and resume normal navigation.

Thank you.

POLITICAL ICEBERG RIGHT AHEAD!

Science under attack again. For those with other axes to grind the publicity around scientific input concerning this pandemic is just another chance to create doubt about the validity of the scientific process itself.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04 ... rus-models#

"Models are absolutely fundamental to doing any kind of science, and so people that rag on models without being specific about what it is they are even talking about are just really betraying that they don't understand how science works," said climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, an author of that paper and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Nonetheless, conservative pundits, who are not trained as climate scientists, have repurposed the coronavirus modeling to attack climate projections in recent days.

"It seems like the computer models for the corona virus pandemic are about as accurate as the computer models that have failed so miserably on global warming," tweeted Patrick Moore, the chairman of the CO2 Coalition, which claims the world needs to burn more fossil fuels to help the planet and has connections to the Trump White House. "Proves you can't predict a chaotic, multi-factor, non-linear future."

------------------------

Dismissing critics who don't understand or who misrepresent models will be important as states look for the best ways to reopen around the country, health experts say.

The last few weeks are proof that modeling works, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. Without their guidance, more people would have died, more economic harm would have occurred and greater health care cost burdens would have been placed on the system, he said.

"The models become even more important now because we're going to need to know when we should adjust our reopening," he said. "We're going to need these models to help us know, as some kind of early warning, when we should stop and pause or pull back a little bit, because if we don't, what will happen is we will get too far down the line and things will get much worse before they get better."

I did an experiment at the hospital to see if you could spoof an IR thermometer (used for non-touch screening). The thing relies on IR radiation given off at the skin surface. They scan over the temporal area because the temporal artery runs there and is quite superficial so it is a more accurate estimate of core body temperature (arterial blood tends to be warmer because it just came from the heart). I went there 5 days in a row, each day aiming the A/C vents in the Stinger more closely at my face. 98.1...97.8...97.5..97.3 and the last day I stuck my temporal area right over the A/C vent and cranked it up to the Everest setting for 3-4 min then I walked quickly to the screener dude...95.3!!! That is where most of the rescued crew of Bismark was right before the Royal Navy gave them brandy to "warm them up"...which caused vasodilation and then sudden death from arrhythmias.

So, if you think you have COVID but really want to go to the Lakers game you put some ice packs on our temples before you get screened.

"science under attack" [>:]

Did you not just see what the nice moderator man said?

I'm kind of hoping this thing dies back in the summer like the flu does. Lock-downs, isolation and similar measures seems to have helped too. We had a good run in most places but we are getting some spikes in the last day or so. Texas has not had a good couple of days. So I drilled down on the particulars and notice the numbers going up in the Texas panhandle. Now that is odd and it conflicts with my general observations that Covid likes people packed into tight spaces and the more rural you got the less likely it was to reach you area in large numbers. I don't know much about Texas but I do know the Panhandle is certainly not an urban hotspot. Cut to the chase......It is the meat packing plants again. Amarillo https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/a ... 275484.php

If bad actors had not considered the Coronaviridae as biological weapons they will now.

You take COVID-19 which is already quite nasty and you use CRISPER technology to alter the spike protein host attachment region RNA to give it a designer attachment point on the host cell. This will essentially render most immunity to COVID-19 moot. Maybe you use an Influenza binding site (Hemagglutinin) but use an influenza strain with low natural immunity in the population and not in vaccines recently. Then you make influenza vaccine with the appropriate HA antigen and you secretly immunize your population and then you turn the damn thing loose after the WHO has picked the Influenza antigens for the season and production has started.

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

I'm kind of hoping this thing dies back in the summer like the flu does. Lock-downs, isolation and similar measures seems to have helped too. We had a good run in most places but we are getting some spikes in the last day or so. Texas has not had a good couple of days. So I drilled down on the particulars and notice the numbers going up in the Texas panhandle. Now that is odd and it conflicts with my general observations that Covid likes people packed into tight spaces and the more rural you got the less likely it was to reach you area in large numbers. I don't know much about Texas but I do know the Panhandle is certainly not an urban hotspot. Cut to the chase......It is the meat packing plants again. Amarillo https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/a ... 275484.php

Man, that is a big jump. What the Chicoms would do is shut down Amarillo. Nobody in or out. Shut down Interstate 40. Make everyone take a big detour.

There is a new strain of Corona virus. It's spread by singing. It's called Crooner virus.

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

"science under attack" [>:]

Did you not just see what the nice moderator man said?

Read the post.

Just above someone has again had a go at models for being mistaken, coding for being badly written, and lockdowns as a result being a mistake. So science is part of this dialogue, and when someone calls into question the very basis of operating as a scientist, I'll post back about that. Sorry, it's very relevant.

Happy to forward your next racist or political post to the moderator for approval, or just look back for the 80 you've already written.