['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

Apparently no one wants to actually answer your question

His question was answered multiple times.

Originally Posted by DaFace

I'm not defending the model. I'm just pushing back on the idea that it's appropriate to react with "OMG THE MODELS ARE ALL WRONG AND WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE DONE ANYTHING!!!!!111!!ONE!!!" when the numbers shift.

If a Category 5 hurricane is making a beeline for Miami, is it not appropriate for leaders to tell people to GTFO? That happens regularly (well, maybe not Cat 5 necessarily), and it's not at all uncommon for storms to shift and end up veering off into the ocean and not impacting people on land much, if at all. Does that mean that, in the future, leaders should just tell people to stay put even if all the models show a Cat 5 hurricane bearing down? Absolutely not. Ignoring the model entirely could result in a huge catastrophe and thousands of people dead.

This isn't any different. It appears that, through a combination of better understanding of the "storm" by watching its track and our own mitigation efforts, the models are now suggesting that the damage won't be as severe. That doesn't mean that the model was "wrong" in the first place - it just means that better information has resulted in a different understanding.

Again, models should be taken with a grain of salt. But you seem to keep implying that they're completely useless and should be ignored. Doing that would certainly have resulted in far more deaths than we're seeing right now, and that's not really debatable.

I just don't understand what point you're trying to make other than...

Originally Posted by Fat Elvis

I don't think Marcellus understands how modeling works, nor how small changes in the beginning of a time period can lead to *huge* overall changes to final outcome numbers; think of it as compound interest.

Four weeks ago, if you had told me that the numbers the government were basing their projections on were predicated on a 50% compliance rate, I would of told you that it was a pie-in-the-sky projection. I thought we would be lucky to get 25% compliance. But 90% compliance? Never in my wildest dreams did I think that was possible because, quite honestly, I thought there were more morons like Marcellus, Pete, and KCChiefsfan88 running around.

I think one thing that really, really spooked (and by spooked, in a good way) people were the images coming out of Italy before the shit really hit the fan in the US. Those images were simply shocking and looked like a real life nightmare. People did not want *that* so it made it much easier to convince them to follow safe distancing protocols. Because people followed those protocols much, much better than anticipated, our overall infection and death rates were much, much lower than early model projections.

So yes, the math actually does add up.

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

The same guy who yesterday had to be taught about super spreaders is now excoriating a model for ineffectiveness while also not understanding how 90% adherence leads to far, far less growth in a virus that spreads exponentially when not contained.