Reply To: SARS cov2 and Covid 19


Latest News Forums Discussion Forum SARS cov2 and Covid 19 Reply To: SARS cov2 and Covid 19

#53921
Clark
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SA, yes, quarantine is the proper medical term.

And yes, the proper medical procedure of enforcing quarantine should have been the default position from the start.

I disagree that modelling is not proper science. Computer software is an instrument for applied mathematicians. Just as telescopes extended astronomy and microscopes extended biology into hitherto unreachable domains, computers with software extended mathematics into the hitherto unreachable domain of non-linear equations – which are the vast majority of equations, just as microorganisms comprise the vast majority of life and invisible stars and galaxies comprise by far most of the universe.

However I agree that modelling has been overly promoted, and I think this is all part of the government’s covert “herd immunity” plan. Models become essential only beyond the point where the epidemic has got out of control. You don’t need models when you have some hundreds of infectees, all in quarantine, and few new infections each day among non-quarantined society that can be traced. Modelling becomes essential only if you’re trying to hold the infection rate at a manageable level compatible with not overwhelming the healthcare system.

I have been glad of the ICL model because it reveals the daily infection rates and the total infected so far. It has done a very well at that, as is now being confirmed by large-scale antibody studies. But such a tool should never have become essential; had the epidemic been handled properly those figures would have been a simple matter of counting.

Note also that the ICL model requires daily death figures as an input. It’s a macabre retroscope; by examining recent deaths it tells us where we were two weeks ago. But such models are the only way to see that.