For other COVID posts, visit my Quarantine blog.
Governor Andrew Cuomo made a rare confession yesterday by admitting, “We all failed.” He was referring to the fact that he, like most politicians, relied on academic models that have consistently failed to properly predict anything during this COVID crisis. He specifically cited the University of Washington model as being the most egregious, not only because of how wrong it was, but because of how policy decisions were inappropriately made based on their failed projections. I commend Governor Cuomo, even while cynically speculating he will be in the minority of state and federal politicians who admit they were bamboozled.
Since March, I have been assessing federal and academic COVID models growing increasingly frustrated by their overall lack of a sound scientific approach to data analysis. In response, I developed a first principles model and became a lone voice tying to inform media, politicians, and the public to not be swayed into panic and over-reaction by projections that had no basis in actual data.
My simple model correctly predicted the COVID death count on the media-made benchmark day of April 14th, while federal and academic models were off by factor of ten. I correctly predicted when the COVID death rate would reach it’s apex of April 16th, while federal and academic models missed the mark by months. More recently I have been predicting that the COVID death rate will drop below the death rate of the annual flu in early June, while the prestigious Wharton School of Business model from the University of Pennsylvania, puts the June death rate at 4,007 deaths per day and the University of Washington model puts the June death rate at 2,336 deaths per day.
I have exhaustively shared my analysis with the media in the hopes they could understand from a simple model the fallacy of these other erroneous models they were depending on. In part because they couldn’t understand the math and in part because my model did not comport with their narrative, the media blindly and deafly refused to see the truth behind my conclusions, even though my credentials warranted consideration.
Perhaps now that a media darling like Governor Cuomo has opened the door to the possibility that what I have been saying for months is true, members of the media, of President’s Trump COVID Task Force, and of state governor’s response teams will take the time to assess my analysis to see not only the value in solid scientific modeling, but that good data analysis can lead to good policy decisions.
