One thing that’s particularly notable about millenarian doomsday cults is that they’ll never admit they’re wrong. It’s as true of Kent Hovind and Jeanne Dixon, as it is of climate alarmists or the Branch Covidians.
But at least nutters like Hovind and Dixon have the excuse of basing their predictions on over-literal interpretations of ancient myths or on crystal balls. The worrying thing about the latter cults is that they actually claim to be “science”.
As Karl Popper pointed out, any theory that cannot be proved wrong is not science — it’s pseudoscience. Anyone who continually makes post-hoc excuses when their theory fails the real-world test is not a scientist.
“Hold my Kool-Aid”, say the Covidians.
When New South Wales exited lockdown in October, the premier, Dominic Perrottet, warned that with extra freedoms would likely come extra cases and hospitalisations.
Modelling predicted up to 1,900 daily cases during the state’s first easing and a second, larger peak around Christmas. The Burnet Institute forecast hospitalisations would peak between 2,286 and 4,016 in Sydney by the end of September.
Instead daily cases have continued to drop after “freedom day” on 11 October when 446 cases were reported and 769 people were being treated for Covid in hospital.
Almost a month later, NSW’s 14-day reference rate is below one, hospitalisations have dropped by more than two-thirds, and just 222 new Covid cases were reported on Tuesday.
Which, by an amazing coincidence, is pretty much what happened in Britain, after “Freedom Day”: “experts” made their apocalyptic predictions, and almost the precise opposite actually happened.
When Florida ditched restrictions, once again “experts” shrieked doomy predictions… which didn’t come true.
It’s almost as if there’s a pattern, here.
Of course, like any prophet shuffling his feet awkwardly after the world fails to end on cue, the excuses come thick and fast.
Health experts name five key reasons why NSW has managed to keep case numbers so low while reopening its economy to the world […]
Gregory Dore, an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at the Kirby Institute, said the main reason case numbers were much lower than predicted was the effectiveness of the vaccine at containing outbreaks had been underestimated.
If anything, the evidence points in the opposite direction. While the covid vaccines, like the flu vax, ameliorate the severity of an infection, the lab and real-world evidence suggest that they are not nearly so effective at preventing virus transmission. Certainly not enough to explain the observed effect in NSW.
Even so, the concession that “Models underestimated the impact of the vaccination on transmission, and the rate of the vaccine take-up in those first few months” isn’t exactly a winner for the “experts”.
Computer modelling is the entire basis of their “expertise”: if the computer modelling is, by their own admission, so hopeless at predicting real-world outcomes, why should we take any notice of them?
That goes double for another excuse.
Dore said as well as underestimating the effectiveness of the vaccine, modelling may also have overestimated the severity of the Delta strain.
“I think we overestimated how badly it affects your risk of developing serious disease, and overestimated the duration of stay in hospitals. The spectrum of cases in hospital were less severe than they may have originally envisaged.”
The Guardian
No kidding. This is what some of us were saying all along, on the evidence of real-world outbreaks of Delta overseas. But, hey, what would we know? We’re just “denialists”.
We’re not “experts”. Even when the experts are wrong, they’re still better than you, so shut up and do as the experts tell you. Do you really think you’re smarter than a public health expert?
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