COVID Lockdown: What if? The Experts got it wrong.

Did we need to lock down the economy?

Increasingly, it appears that the answer is 'no'.

This is a big problem because IF the economy was locked down based almost entirely on faulty data from the Imperial College Model, and IF the model was as wonky as many are now suggesting, and IF when the underlying models were finally released to the public they were altered from their original form then it's possible that some level of fraud took place. Not likely mind you, but possible.

Even more discouraging is that the politicians, some medical professionals, and media are still using the numbers from this faulty model to drive current and future policy.

The problem is that we're told to "believe in the science".  But what happens when the science is just flat-out wrong?

That's a problem.  "Science" as it's now known, is highly model driven. In many cases the models take over actual empirical data as the gold standard of proof. That's what's happened here and it's what's happening in many cases in current times.

This used to be limited to the social sciences, unfortunately now it's creeping into actual science, with actual real-world consequences. It's led to the rise of political demogogues allowed to spew forth platitudes backed by J-school grads who have only a passing understanding of the actual scientific model.

The worry is that this leads to inane comments such as "the science is settled", which, as we know, is a lie. Science is never "settled", it's never finalized, it's always evolving and changing as new data points are collected and analyzed*.

We truly live in crazy times where too much gravity is given to people who really should not have it. Politicians are not, contrary to their beliefs, experts in infectious diseases. Media members are not experts in public policy. (If you don't believe me on this try this experiment: Find an article written on something you know a lot about. See how many errors it contains. Then ask yourself why you believe, without question, their writing on other subjects).  Front line medical workers, as honorably as they've toiled during this mess, are not experts on national health policy, response, etc.

Just like me, as an accountant, am not an expert on government budgets.  I may have opinions on them, and that's fine, but it doesn't mean that I've got some great insight into the process.

In the best of times there is a ton of noise in the system that you have to try and drown out. This is especially true in the age of social media where no one uses their real name and anyone can type pretty much anything.

We have to start doing better at determining the real from the jabber, and it's going to take all of us working together and actually applying ourselves rather than waiting for a media that's long abdicated that job to do it for us.

Fun times.













*Note: The above is NOT an argument against climate change, which I believe is real. Instead it is a jab against how our politicians and the media report on it. As if what's come before is infallible despite us now knowing it is not (Mann's hockey stick for example, or Gore's 'movie' that contained at least 10 items that were patently incorrect)