Everything always comes down to psychology and economics.

2wealfth Man said:

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Everything always comes down to psychology and economics.

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Now that panic is starting to wane and education continues to increase, the phrase 'Money talks, bull**** walks' seems more relevant than ever.

JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

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Bonfire1996 said:

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Belton Ag said:

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Read the report. The 2 million deaths in the US was based on absolute do nothing - no contact tracing, no quarantine, no spontaneous social reaction. And, so, because they're not in fact stupid, they didn't "predict" this. Pretty much the entire premise of your OP and certainly this post is factually incorrect.

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As someone who actually doesn't doubt the 2 million death number if nothing changed, an argument could be made that the number is very likely not to be achievable. Even if governments, in defiance of everything we know, ordered no shelter in place and no distancing, humans, being rational actors in aggregate, would aldapt and distance themselves. They could host football games, but few would show up, etc.

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This is my entire point, just with less dirty language.

The writers of the 2 million death baseline think very little of the human populace's general intelligence and survival instincts. And to me, it absolutely disqualifies them from any future modeling.

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You act like all models are the same, with the same inputs and the same goal as far as predictions....

You saying that a model - that you are refusing to actually attempt to understand - is invalid and that the data scientists should be "disqualified" from future modeling would be about like me packing a messenger bag for a 2 week trip to Europe and then complaining that the manufacturer should never be allowed to make baggage again because it was so far off from what I needed.

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This is a great analogy

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Models are only as good as the data you put into them. Models are used to predict weather all the times. And we know exactly what happens when you put too much faith into the weather forecasters.

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And weather models are missing a TON of data points now because the Coronavirus has grounded so many airline flights around the world.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/03/826848818/one-more-coronavirus-problem-accurate-weather-forecasts

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Widespread cancellations of commercial flights are creating problems for meteorologists around the world. That's because weather forecasting models rely on temperature and wind data gathered by thousands of planes flying overhead.

The National Weather Service uses more than 250 million measurements from aircraft every year, which are fed into complex weather computer models. As of the end of March, meteorological data provided by U.S. aircraft had dropped by half.

The World Meteorological Organization says it's "concerned about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quantity and quality of weather observations and forecasts."

But NOAA officials say while it's still too early to tell, the drop won't necessarily lead to less accurate weather reports since they're finding ways to compensate.

"While there is a reduction of commercial passenger flights, we still receive valuable aircraft data from overnight cargo and package carriers," says NOAA spokesperson Lauren Gaches. "We also collect billions of Earth observations from other sources that feed into our models, such as weather balloons, surface weather observation network, radar, satellites and buoys."

Weather forecasters in Europe are facing the same decline. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reports a 80% drop in meteorological readings due to cancellations of commercial flights. According to their study, removing all aircraft data from weather models reduces accuracy by 15%.

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NWS is downplaying the impact, but I'm much more inclined to believe the European Centre's prediction of a 15% reduction in accuracy. Weather forecast models have been fine tuned to USE the aircraft data (250 million a year according to NWS) so losing 50% of it HAS to have an impact.

On a side note the European Model has been the most accurate model in the world for many, many years. If they say it reduces their accuracy by 15% BELIEVE IT.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/full-european-ecmwf-model-available-on-pro/59119

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Is Their Model Really More Accurate?

Yes, it is demonstrably more accurate than the U.S. GFS long-range model and the UKMET model, according to an ongoing study by the U.S. government that I reported on last year. Here are some quotes from long-range expert Joe *******i:

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Another side note: Joe B spent several years in College Station while his dad was getting an A&M degree. Joe lives in NJ but loves A&M and visits at least once a year and often more than that. When his kids were growing up Joe and his family took a road trip to College Station every summer. From what Joe has written he "gets" A&M and wanted his kids to experience it as well. I met Joe in the early 80's when he was just getting started with Accuweather. I was in charge of the AF wx station at Cannon AFB, Clovis NM and invited him to visit our station when he was visiting Clovis.

Edit: The texags filter always blanks out his name. It starts with a B and without the "i" at the end is a cuss word, so that's why it is always filtered. I just refer to him as Joe B but the filter caught the name in my quote. BTW - Joe B is well known by many texags posters.

NormanAg said:

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Thanks! They might want to update their population models when this crisis is over. If the main variable that is keeping the less populated states/counties numbers much lower than expected is social distancing, the SD variable is MUCH more likely to exist naturally and easy to do in rural areas. SD and low populations are MADE for each other, which should result in a higher impact of SD in those areas. And a LOWER impact in large urban areas like NYC, Detroit, Chicago, etc. I suspect Houston and Dallas, while heavily populated areas are somewhat less crowded and more spread out than the cities I listed.

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Maybe counterintuitive, but SD would have more impact on urban areas than rural. Think of it this way: 500 rural residents typically make 10 contacts with each other. That's 2500 contacts. Cut each individual's contacts by 50%, and you've reduced the total to 1250. 100,000 urban residents typically make 20 contacts with each other. That's 1,000,000 contacts. Cut each individual's contacts by 50%, and you've reduced the total to 500,000. That's a much bigger cut.

Also, rural residents have fewer contacts to cut. If they're typically working at home, not going out to eat, not going to movies, mini-golf, the frozen yogurt store, etc, they have fewer contacts to cut. SD might only cut a rural community's contacts by 10% whereas it may cut an urban community's but 75%.

My counter argument is that rural people just naturally engage in social distancing by the nature of how they live. Urban areas basically CAN'T do effective social distancing, even when they WANT to and TRY to. It's impossible. SD CAN work in rural areas - it CAN'T work in places like NYC, no matter how hard they try. It's just impossible.