The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

IMHE Lowers COVID-19 U.S. Death Projection Again, Now Down to 60,000

Posted on | April 9, 2020 | Comments Off on IMHE Lowers COVID-19 U.S. Death Projection Again, Now Down to 60,000

 

While MSNBC hosts were busy spreading conspiracy theories, the doomsday forecasters were revising their numbers again:

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model cited by the White House Coronavirus Task Force lowered its projections for coronavirus deaths in the U.S. by 25 percent from 81,766 to 60,415 early Wednesday morning.
The IHME model has come under withering criticism for vastly overstating projections of regular and ICU hospital beds needed, but its death projections to date have closely tracked with actual data.
Wednesday’s dramatic reverse in the model’s projection of U.S. deaths was made without a press release from IHME explaining the reasons for the reduction. It marks the second reduction in the model’s U.S. deaths projections since April 1, when it forecast 93,765 U.S. fatalities.
On April 5, the death projections were lowered to 81,766. . . .
The April 8 iteration of the IHME model has reduced the projections of coronavirus deaths in New York State to 13,307, down from the April 6 projection of more than 15,000.
It persists, however, in claiming there will be a shortage of regular hospital beds in New York State on the peak day of Wednesday April 8, despite Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s statement at Tuesday’s press conference the state has “more than enough beds available.”

So, in one week, the forecast has been reduced more than 30% and the IHME’s scary predictions of a crisis caused by a shortage of hospital beds has been proven false. Now, we have Chris Hayes suggesting to his Twitter audience of 2 million followers that somehow the IHME — an institute funded by Bill Gates, who handpicked a Harvard professor (Chris Murray) to lead it — was in cahoots with the Trump administration. Alex Jones is banned from Twitter for promoting “conspiracy theories,” but paranoia is OK when MSNBC hosts do it.

Also, it is important to note that “social distancing” cannot explain the failures of the IHME model projections, as Sean Davis points out:

“The IHME models assumed ‘full social distancing,’ including school closures, business shutdowns, and stay-at-home lockdowns from the beginning. It requires abject stupidity or outright dishonesty to claim ‘social distancing’ caused the model revisions.”

Nobody likes to admit they were wrong, but when you are as wrong as badly as Chris Hayes was wrong — and as I’ve pointed out, he was speaking in terms of “millions of lives” just three weeks ago — it’s sociopathic to double-down and blame others for your own errors.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike and, while I was writing this post, Ace of Spades was about a half-hour ahead of me:

One month ago, Chris Hayes accused Trump of “personally pressuring” health officials to “manipulate the numbers downwards.” . . .
Now he says Trump has manipulated the numbers upward.
So which is it, Chris? It can’t be both.
The media and the social media monopolists conspire to control the public discourse by deplatforming and censoring anyone who utters a “conspiracy theory,” the true definition of which is any speculation that the leftwing corporate media disapproves of.

Beware of angry ewoks.




 

Category: Health Care, Media Bias

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