General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSTATNEWS: Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn't guide U.S. policies, critics
[link:https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/17/influential-covid-19-model-uses-flawed-methods-shouldnt-guide-policies-critics-say/|
Awidely followed model for projecting Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. is producing results that have been bouncing up and down like an unpredictable fever, and now epidemiologists are criticizing it as flawed and misleading for both the public and policy makers. In particular, they warn against relying on it as the basis for government decision-making, including on re-opening America.
Its not a model that most of us in the infectious disease epidemiology field think is well suited to projecting Covid-19 deaths, epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told reporters this week, referring to projections by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Others experts, including some colleagues of the model-makers, are even harsher. That the IHME model keeps changing is evidence of its lack of reliability as a predictive tool, said epidemiologist Ruth Etzioni of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, home to several of the researchers who created the model, and who has served on a search committee for IHME. That it is being used for policy decisions and its results interpreted wrongly is a travesty unfolding before our eyes.
Much more at link.
Squinch
(51,004 posts)I've been told that I'm insisting it's crap because I'm a ghoul who is wishing for a higher death count.
But the fact that it has ALWAYS low balled the numbers by huge amounts was pretty clear for all to see from the beginning.
As I have said before, I think we will find down the road that lots if Republican money goes to funding that group, and they are open to taking suggestions from their funders.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,856 posts)The math doesnt mean much if the assumptions are flawed, such as the idea that our curve-flattening methods are equivalent to what happened in China.
I havent been a target for mentioning it, but Ive seen it here.
Yonnie3
(17,483 posts)A PDF file of methods and results are here: https://covid19.biocomplexity.virginia.edu/sites/covid19.biocomplexity/files/COVID-19-UVA-MODEL-FINDINGS-Apr13-2020-FINAL%20PRESS.pdf
The IMHE and UVa models both show large bands of uncertainty. The tendency to accept the line showing the most probable of these uncertainties as input for decisions is problematic for me.
IMHE recently showed a peak resource usage in Virginia as 4/27. That date has moved about two weeks as I recall.
UVa uses five different levels of mitigation ranging from none to a "pause" lasting until June tenth and breaks Virginia up in to six regions.
Worst case (unmitigated) shows Late April to Mid May for cases to exceed surge capacity and the best case with very effective measures shows Mid July to Late August. The peaks for the best case of social distancing are in August for most regions of Virginia. Far Southwestern Virginia is quite different from Northern Virginia.