SAGE Modeller Says They Don’t Model Good Outcomes Because “It Doesn’t Add Any Further Information”
As SAGE minutes released with the Government’s approval make the case for new restrictions and even the cancellation of Christmas, Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson probed SAGE modeller Graham Medley on Twitter on why SAGE’s models were so often pessimistic and wrong.
The exchange, reproduced in full below, is illuminating because Graham says they do not include more benign scenarios because “it doesn’t add any further information” and “decision-makers are generally on [sic] only interested in situations where decisions have to be made”.
“Decision-makers don’t have to decide if nothing happens,” he argues. This is wrong, of course: not imposing restrictions because the threat doesn’t warrant it is itself a decision, a very important one.
Fraser asks: “So you exclusively model bad outcomes that require restrictions and omit just-as-likely outcomes that would not require restrictions?”
Graham replies that “we generally model what we are asked to model”.
Fraser asks: “Okay, so you were asked to model bad Omicron outcomes and make no comment as to the probability?”
Graham’s reply: “We model the scenarios that are useful to decisions.”
Ladies and gentleman: The Science.
Stop Press: Fraser has written about his Twitter exchange on the Spectator blog.
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Read this and weep.
His excuse: “Decision makers are only interested in data which needs decision making.” What if no decision is needed!?
Or what if the decision is to take action to ensure the economy isnt ruined, that society isn’t irreparably divided, a generations eduction and mental health isn’t destroyed, people aren’t injured and killed by forced medication and a tsunami of cancer cases isn’t created by destroying to daily function of the health service? Is there no decision to be made there.
We are being led by imbeciles and puppets. No, we’re not being led because there’s no leadership. We are being betrayed.
But but but they made no fucking decisions that benefitted the great unwashed.
Where was the public health advice that would have lead to strengthened immune systems and fewer serious infections?
No fucking where, that’s where.
Instead we pissed the nation’s blood and treasure up against the failed vaccines, failed PPI, and failed non-pharmaceutical interventions.
Can we now please strip every conceivable financial asset from the lying cheating advisors and magic potion makers and useless tests and face nappy makers and spend it instead of a proper Health Service worthy of the name.
I always use an example used in a John Stossel TV special (when Stossel could still produce those).
In a program called “Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?” Stossel documented how many millions of dollars were spent to remove contaminated lead from soil around some industrial site. Giant dump trucks removed soil for months.
Stossel interviewed a contrarian expert who said that, “yes, contaminated lead might increase the chances of cancer in some person … if this person ate a bucket of contaminated sand every day for 20 years.”
Wouldn’t all of this money spent to improve “public health” have been better off spent building extra guardrails on dangerous sections of roadway around the country? We KNOW over decades, many people will die or be severely injured from cars running off the road and hitting trees or other cars.
What’s the “public health” return on investment from all these COVID mandates (compared to measures that definitely would save many lives)?
These type questions never get asked (because there are only one or two journalists left who think like Stossel).
What a f.ing load of nonsensical blather.
A bit like the whole Covid scam. Explains a lot about SAGE incompetence. They can’t even think in a straight line.
P.S. You don’t model good or bad ‘outcomes’ – you model f.ing probabilities, based on constant reflexive testing of your model against reality.
They don’t, apparently.
Stop talking sense.
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” – T. Sowell
It’s ok, everyone. They’re trying to learn from the climate people, who also have outrageously inaccurate models.
Attaching images is… broken.
Yes that statement jumped out at me as well.
I caused the dog to jump out of her bed when I read that.
There is no difference between Covid and Climate. None at all. It’s exactly the same people, with exactly the same graphs, just with the y-axis changed from Degrees Celcius to Cases.
Vallance, Whitty, Ferguson, Ferguson’s bit on the side … They’ve all been obsessive global-warmingists for years.
I think this is why the founders of Lockdown Skeptics changed the name of this site to “Daily Skeptic.” They know there is so much other bogus or dubious material that skeptics need to present to the public. Covid stories are just the tip of the iceberg.
In my lifetime the first climate emergency was an ice age, the next it was is going to be like the film waterworld and now the Antarctic is going to be like a trip to Florida in August 🙂
Last year the Antarctic winter (April to September) at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station was the coldest on record with average of -61.1 ° C.
Antarctica also has the coldest temperatures ever recorded of -92 to -94, measured between 2003 and 2013. This broke the previous cold record of -89.2 set in 1983.
The Ice Age is not over and we are at the end of a warm interlude.
they just need to hide the decline (in cases this time).
That point was one of the more outrageous statements made
The Climate People? They sound like a 70s hippie band. Oh wait!
Psychopath.
Psychopath? Complete fucking moron, more like.
“Decision makers don’t have to decide if nothing happens”
Deciding not to do nothing isn’t a decision? Ok…
And this is the caliber of the technocrats who are in effect directing our every day lives like they have never before.
Sounds like a common purpose graduate to me. This is the level of argument that I have previously had with known CP morons. It makes you want to smash your head against the wall to make them shut up.
Disgraceful!
I think this was pretty obvious to be fair. It’s good to have it confirmed though.
OMG can’t decide whether its:
The blind leading the blind
or
He who pays the piper calls the tune
And power corrupts…..
Its hard prima facie evidence that Bovid is a constructed scam, nothing to do with real science. They just admitted it. The whole thing is a scam and people still cant bring themselves to admit this, because their ego gets in the way so they cant do proper analysis without emotional ties draggin their views with them, despite the evidence. There is no novel virus – put simply, there is no hard evidence of a novel virus where there should be bundles of it. With all the money thrown at this it should be simple to disprove this, but you cant, because it is correct and the field of virology has been exposed to be based on deceit and poor invalid fraudulent science. Those who continue to believe there is a novel virus in the abscence of definitive supporting evidence are their own worst enemies. Why concede the existence of an unproven virus to these criminals which then gives them the rope they need to hang society. When peoples immune systems fail to meet the challenges of being alive, they get ill. This can be self inflicted by drinking too much for example. DS is clearly all about pushing the… Read more »
Re: “Pack journalists” I see two possibilities …
1) They are all ignorant and can’t think of these lines of inquiry on their own. or …
2) They know their reporting is one-sided and not presenting important other facts … and simply don’t care. They know their job is to advance or protect the authorized agenda.
Either way, we’re screwed. Or: “The watchdog press” is going to remain part of the problem, not the solution.
In a weird way, this interaction is the most enlightening of this entire sh*t show. “We model what we are asked to model”
Ok so as a mid 50s chap who works/ed in travel could you model that the last 20 months didn’t happen and I can have all my lost earnings/businesses’
/relationship and mental health back please?
No?
C*nt!
Yep. It’s an admission that this isn’t science, but – as suspected – data cooked up for a given conclusion.
Agreed, don’t know why but the admission annoyed me hugely. Even though I’ve known it since day 1…Ok maybe day 4.
That isn’t in the modeling specification.
I don’t normally read Fraser. But that last comment is brilliant.
Revealing what we have suspected/known for ages. The sheer immorality of these people examples the depths to which politics has descended. Lower and lower with Johnson at the helm of this. Sickening. These people have a breath taking ability to be immoral and stupid. Admitting it over twitter (some might say what a twit!)
Governments appoint their advisers.
Governments set the parameters for models.
Governments ignore real world data.
Governments make the policies to combat a “perceived” threat.
All the blame lays squarely with Governments.
Unfortunately nearly all politicians of whatever persuasion are the same so the public has no real alternative choice on who sets the policy.
We all know this already.
The only real piece of news here is that it has taken the journalist class 21 months to START asking some probing questions.
Unfortunately, it is The Spectator, which doesn’t exactly drive opinion in Britain.
Will the BBC, ITV, Sky take note and start asking some proper questions? Not bloody likely.
You can’t “drain the swamp” until the newsrooms have been purged. And this isn’t going to happen, and, so, really the only possible solution is to start sites like The Daily Skeptic where “alternative” facts and opinions CAN be presented.
We need a LOT more Toby Youngs in other words.
Here’s how they manufacture their ‘good outcome’
These debates are a waste of electricity.
These debates show why we don’t have more real debates.
Oh they’re learning from the climate people.
That’s re-assuring. What could possibly go wrong.
And the “climate people” control ALL the important organizations and institutions … kind of like the “COVID people” control the same. So, yes, we’re screwed.
Fraser asks: “Okay, so you were asked to model bad Omicron outcomes and make no comment as to the probability?” They dont actually need a real virus to manufacture a bad outcome. All they need do is conjure up a ‘genome sequence’ on the computer, call it a new virus, then invent a fake test for this ‘virus’ and reclassify normal deaths as virus deaths. Chuck in millions of false posive ‘cases’ in healthy people and you have your pandemic. Of course, it helps if you can get the death rate up and thats where lockdowns, DNR notices, social isolation, cancelled heathcare and forced but deadly medical procedures come into play.
The whole global financial crisis was caused by models built by maths prodigies to calculate value at risk. This isn’t surprising. The only surprising thing is that the thick as pigshit MSM are clueless and all MPs are as well. This is how democracy ends.
They arent clueless. Politicians and jouranlists are highly paid actors performing rolls that make the false reality conjured up by our rulers, in this case a pandemic, seem real.
They are clueless because they are not actually in on it, but rather useful idiots that are too stupid to realise they are being used.
They play along unwittingly seduced by little crumbs that are thrown their way.
Of course they are ‘in on it’. Thats why they actively lie for a living. They will most likely not realise the end game but they are certainly part of the problem. The real clueless are those that believe the lies the politicians and journalists knowingly spout.
The real surprise is that people are still making and adhering to models.
But the main point is that no model creator could create a model that showed all the tremendous level of harm and misery all the NPIs would produce.
Different class from Fraser Nelson. Any chance he could become the next Prime Minister?
Medley: Yeah but, no but, yeah but……
A vast fraud and deception, encouraged by government and modelled on the King of Liars Johnson.
Despicable.
Let me see if I understand this. The nudge unit determines the latest message and then the scientists come up with a some scary sounding nonsense to make it sound worse.
What we haven’t heard about yet is the Statistical Determinism Group who come up with the numbers to justify the plan.
Two fuc**** years and counting, even the Monarchy were taken in by this bullshit. God help help us!
The monarchy just do as they’re told. The last time the Queen tried to have an opinion was when Diana died and she was quickly put in her place. And they’ll do whatever they have to do to keep their ornamental status and cling on to their privileges.
‘Even the monarchy’????
Ffs. – they’re part of the establishment that runs the scam! Part of the original European conspiracy network with an incestuous bent.
Don’t think the Monarchy were taken in by anything. Remember the Queen’s speech right at the beginning, telling us that we were about to experience social upheaval and invoking wartime propaganda? She and they are very much part of the racket.
Indeed. The Windsors are very much part of the eugenicist racket but seem very reluctant to lead the way.
In times past, monarchs and emperors would have been the richest and most powerful people in the world. In later centuries, financiers and industrialists came to the fore. Stephen Girard, the Rothschild family and JD Rockefeller come to mind. Now the richest and arguably most powerful people in the world are the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, the general public are largely unaware that the banking/corporate elite are our new feudal overlords ie the New World Order. There was no single event that bought about the global transfer of power from monarchs to this new elite. It happened over time, in different places in a variety of ways. In some cases, the elite achieved their goal by manipulating the masses into agitating for change, sometimes by orchestrating a revolution to depose the monarchical structure in the mistaken belief that the treasures of the realm would be more equitably distributed. However, as ably demonstrated by Orwell’s Animal Farm, all that happens in such circumstances is the old aristocracy are replaced by a new one. The situation today is that a banking and corporate elite has, over time, exploited those on the bottom of… Read more »
Their modelling doesn’t work anyway — covid doesn’t behave according to SIR assumptions. They’ve got misleading statements based on inaccurate modelling.
It’s about time that these modellers butted out and stuck to building Airfix kits for all the use they have been. The damage that they have done to our country and society will take generations to repair. They and the organisations that they work for, need to be called to account through a massive class action lawsuit. But who will pick up the challenge?
Ask a mathematician what 2 + 2 is and he’ll say 4. Ask a physicist and he’ll say 4. Ask an historian and he’ll say 4. Ask an epidemiologist and he’ll say … what do you want it to be?
2+2=?
Mathematician: 4
Engineer: 5, with a 20% safety margin
Physicist: about 10, give or take an order of magnitude.
Accountant: how much do you want it to be?
Lawyer: about $400 per hour.
Economist: Depends what the interest rate is.
Also there was a bit on Mark Dolan’s GB News show just now about the Sunday Times muppets over the last couple of weeks talking up the “90% of hospitalisations among the ‘unvaccinated’ ” myth. (The real number was said to be about one third, with some of those being people who are too sick to be “vaccinated”)..
Do any of these major newspapers or politicians give us accurate information?
Add that fucker to the list.
Bad news keeps many more people employed than good news, including Mr Medley.
This really is totally unacceptable. Is it, however, an attempt by Medley to reveal what is actually happening in SAGE? Irrespective, it suggests an extraordinary absence of professional conduct and what many (including me) would suggest is incompetence. I suspect we will read more about this in the Spectator in due course.
With all due respect, this article is nigh on proof that incompetence has got sweet FA to do with this.
If I were the auditor asking these questions (and I have some experience in the subject), at that end point I’d probably say thank you, and then go back to the customer (the Government) to continue the questioning. The main point that, therefore, needed to be established was: who was responsible for orchestration in the project? Ie who’s ultimately calling the shots, the Government or the modellers?
My hunch at that point would be that everything revolves around the future public inquiry. Most likely the advisers want to cover their backs and say that they were just following orders, while the Government will want to cover their backs and say they were just following “The Science”.
The result being that orchestration falls between the cracks.
You don’t really believe that there will be a benign process of audit?