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Modelling. Photoshopped image credit: Rick H. The BFD

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I have seen a number of articles recently that have suggested that we are expecting huge numbers of positive cases of Omicron in the next few weeks.

Here is the headline from the first article from Newshub, published on January 27th:

There’s that ‘modelling’ again. As an accountant, I was frequently asked to do forecasts for clients to support loan applications. They were pie in the sky. The last few years have proved that nobody knows what will actually happen and frankly I could have put any numbers in the forecasts that I felt like as nobody would have ever been any the wiser.

I didn’t do that, of course. I made them as favourable to the client and as acceptable to the bank as I could. The banks always went with them. So long as they had a piece of paper on file, admittedly with completely fabricated numbers, they were quite happy.

The Newshub article came originally from RNZ, and was published by them on the same day, January 27th (just over a week ago). Here is the most interesting bit.

New Zealand could be facing 50,000 daily Omicron infections by Waitangi weekend, according to modelling by a highly-respected, overseas health research organisation, peaking at about 80,000 each day just a few weeks later.

Well, guess what? It is now Waitangi weekend. There was no way on earth that the case numbers were going to get to 50,000 in just over a week. Friday (4 February) showed 209 cases, on Thursday 3 February 147 cases were reported and on Wednesday 2 February 126 cases were reported. The numbers will have to multiply 250 times in the next few days to reach the levels predicted by the modellers.

And we are constantly told to ‘trust the science’.

Modelling. Photoshopped image credit: Rick H. The BFD

This is nothing more than blatant scaremongering. It works, by the way. I have previously told you about friends who really believe that they are going to die in the next few weeks. I haven’t seen them recently, because they are hunkering down, waiting for the end… all in a town that has still not had a single case of COVID in 2 years.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) projections, updated last Thursday, predict an outbreak in New Zealand lasting about three months, with death rates projected to total more than 400 by 1 May. Daily fatalities are predicted to spike at about 10 through mid March.

Even though Omicron is nothing more than a 2-day cold? 10 deaths per day? What absolute rubbish.

There are also warnings this country’s ICU capacity will come under “extreme stress” through February and March.

As we have been warned for the last 2 years and yet it has never happened. Instead, we now have people dying, or likely to die, because of postponed treatments or undiagnosed conditions. Isn’t the health service supposed to be about curing sick people, not stopping itself from getting overwhelmed, and putting lives at risk in the process?

This is just scaremongering, pure and simple. It is disgraceful.

In case you were not fully convinced, the next thing they do is wheel out the ‘experts’:

These are of course predictions and should be viewed as such, however they have been given credence by New Zealand’s leading experts including University of Otago professors Nick Wilson and Michael Baker: “Our impression is that this work is of high quality and should be considered by NZ policy-makers … [it’s] an organisation with a very strong track record for analysing health data (with some of the best epidemiologists, health data scientists and computer scientists in the world).”

RNZ

The work is of “high quality“? Really?

All the way through this pandemic, we have been lied to with grossly overstated numbers that make gullible people think that millions of people will die. Few people around the world have died of Omicron, but that actual fact has not stopped the modellers from spewing out scaremongering rubbish. Michael Baker has been guilty of it all the way through and Shaun Hendy has been a major contributor, although clearly he is not alone.

So as we wait with bated breath for the number of cases to multiply by about 25,000% over the next few days, spare a thought for all the unfortunate people who believe this stuff. The fear is wrecking people’s lives.

Somebody ought to be held to account for all this but, as we know, the proteges of this despotic regime will all be protected. And the media, including supposedly respectable outlets such as RNZ, will continue to spout this rubbish without credibility, because they can.

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