Generally, that’s why I don’t write about theoretical models. They tend towards simplicity to the point of absurdity. The old quip that “some are useful” neglects the antipodal “most are not useful”, and, as we have seen with the coronavirus and climate change models, can blur or even obscure people’s world views to the point where they become dangerous, society-devouring fanatics.
But a couple people pointed out a paper from David Fisman titled Impact of population mixing between vaccinated and unvaccinated subpopulations on infectious disease dynamics, so I decided to give it a read.
The paper points out that “[s]imple mathematical models can often provide important insights into the behaviour of complex communicable diseases systems”. The model is definitely simple, but the insights garnered from it are about as useful as a modeller playing tic-tac-toe with himself. […]
The results are obvious because their entire model is just overly complicated algebra: the vaccinated get infected at higher rates when unvaccinated are presented and unvaccinated do worse with unvaccinated. This model is so insightful that I had to double check the credentials of the modellers because I could have sworn they were 3rd year undergraduate students.
If you set up the model in the same way, but assume vaccine effectiveness is strictly negative, then you get the opposite result.
Colby Cosh: Oh, for happier times, when what appeared in CMAJ a few hours ago was mostly ignored all the way through instead of half-digested…
h/t Hob, LindaL
And there’s so much lobotomy in Canadian people that the idea will be: hey comrades,let’s drag out in the streets all unvaccinated and forcefully vaccinate/boost ’em all.
All the unvaccinated should be confined to gulags to protect the vaccinated.
‘3rd year grad student’ is pretty generous. I was thinking maybe a grade 10 kid in a hurry? The older I get, the more disappointed I am in anything ‘higher learning’ or in what passes for research these days.
H
The 6 foot separation rule came from some junior high school kids science project when the first Saars virus appeared.
So these grade 10 or third year or whatever students can’t be any worse can they?
well is it 6 feet or 2 meters, because the government can’t seem to make up its mind
Actually I read it came from a 1890s study on the transmission of tuberculosis. They didn’t know the causal agent but the ‘expert’ of the day guessed staying apart 6 feet would help.
https://www.studyfinds.org/social-distancing-six-feet-apart-outdated-science/
Justin wanted a justification to keep the vax pass for Canadians travelling by air, train, or sea, this gives it to him.
Exactly!
Come on down and get me. All computer models are subject to garbage in, garbage out. Covid has been a garbage in, garbage out fraud from the start. Not one person has proven this wrong, and I did not develop the science that disproves everything about the fraud that is “covid”. People are so stupid they can no longer think critically or logically. The vaxxes are killing tens of thousands, oh no can’t be. The vaxxes cannot prevent, infection, transmission, mitigate illness, or prevent death, oh no can’t be. Masks cannot stop a virus ever, oh no can’t be . The unvaxxed can infect the vaxxed, now anyone who is dumb enough to believe that, must be a Canadian. Canadians are stupid, oh yes they are. I despise most of my fellow, very stupid Canadians. Sadly, I can change nothing. Just FOAD and leave me alone Mr. Twaddels.
Doesn’t it go back to first principles, so to speak? Can we control a multispecies coronavirus which mutates frequently and rapidly using a method relying on ‘vaccines’ developed post outbreak? Never had, never could. But then what do us slobs know out in the hinterlands?
“But then what do us slobs know out in the hinterlands?”
Apparently more than the purported, “experts”.
Considering the average age of a “senior” health reporter is 26 (and reports to “senior health editor” of 28), and that the last math class they may have had was Stat 101 in first year uni (and passed only because we don’t fail anyone anymore)…
Yeah, that explains the headlines.
In other news, the more people who get COVID and get over it after a few days of aches and pains…the more desperate the Fizzlemen will get.
no “journalist” would ever see the inside of a Stats 101 class, as it’s not required for graduation, and full of icky math
Boom! Mic drop.
I wonder if big pharma paid for that drivel, that’s not science if you have to use words like: Could, might, maybe etc. it’s not science it’s an opinion piece. The media should be charged with hate crimes, they constantly rile up the vaccinated fanatics with fake science such as this.
Can anyone explain how it is that an unvaccinated person is a greater risk to a vaccinated person? I don’t see it. We now know that the people who getting infected and reinfected are the vaccinated themselves and they are passing it around.
This bio weapon experiment was nothing more than a test to see how stupid and frightened people can get over a flu bug. It also was great for totalitarian wannabes to stretch their legs.
This Fisman jackass is another paid shill for Pfizer. Not an honest bone in his corrupt body. If anyone needs to be at or near the head of the list when Nuremberg 2.0 starts, he’s among the top candidates.
Yup. Look him up. He took money from Pfizer and Astra Zeneca.
He was on Ontario’s Covid propaganda team.
Etc.
In short, another shill for big pharma, just like Bonnie Bullshit and other pigs.
And not just Pfizer and Astra Zeneca but also the Ontario Teacher’s Union. He made the models worse because the teachers didn’t want to go back to in class teaching (their day jobs). Here is the announcement when he quit the Science Table:
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/08/23/news/outspoken-doctor-quits-group-advising-doug-ford-covid-19
And here is the Toronto Sun article talking about his receipt of bribe:
https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/science-table-member-paid-by-teacher-union-for-arguing-against-school-re-openings
So he is about as trustworthy as a whore telling you that you are very handsome.
Codex
Both like the looks of your money, there’s that!
Well, that and the fact that Dr! Fizzleman is still going on about “tsunamis of death”…
Triple vaxxed MIL fell and broke her hip. During her hospital stay she has been moved to isolation because her triple vaxxed nurse got Covid and exposed her.
Triple vaxxed mother and stepfather went out for the first time to an event and contracted Covid from the triple vaxxed friend she sat beside.
But they will still all believe those headlines as gospel.
Also 3x vaxxed SIL and BIL got infected. It’s almost comedic, but when you are blind to the punchline no one can have a good laugh and move on.
Absolutely they will believe those headlines. Up until approx. 15yrs ago I used to naively think people would think for themselves, weather it be hearing something or reading anything. Shocking to know that this has only gotten worse. Educated people that I know will have a discussion about those headlines, but it is exhausting because a) you have to start right at the beginning and b) must go gently with your teaching!
Thanks for covering this. The manipulation by the researchers is outrageous. The gullibility of the media– even more so. They are heavily invested in promoting a particular narrative — that unvaxed are greater risk for transmission than vaxed, but they simply have no evidence. So they are grasping at straws. A good example of ” fake news”. All those media outlets should be apologising for misleading their readers.
Do you expect the bought and paid for media to go against the story that they were bought and paid for?
(I should not end this sentence with a preposition but the correct way to say it is a little horse arsery).
What this REALLY shows is that the “vaccinated” have damaged immune systems from the “vaccines”. The UK vaccine surveillance data clearly shows that to be true….which is why the UK stopped providing the Covid death breakdowns by age group and vaccine status as of Week 14.
Yep. Information (real facts, not political platitudes & narratives) is dangerous. It causes free thinking and revolution, and they can’t have that.
Kate, thanks for this link to Jestre’s SubStack article.
I took Stats at both the undergrad and grad level in Uni as well as Econ (where we built models in the more advanced courses), and it became obvious to me decades ago that the vast majority of models were simply algebraic/statistical instantiations of a modeler’s beliefs/prejudices about how some phenomenon worked (like, say, unemployment, labour mobility, inflation, etc.), which in turn was an attempt to describe some aspect of group-averaged human behaviour. It’s one of the reasons that there are so many economics-trained people who are also sceptics of most social policies that are built around mathematical models. If you knew that a model had been built by (say) a raving Marxist, you already knew what the model was probably going to “prove” about some aspect of human behaviour. In other words, a mathematical model simply becomes another rhetorical device to buttress an argument. (Uni’s where I learned to chant “The map is not the territory, and a model isn’t even a good map.”)
Models could be a lot more useful if the modeler’s assumptions were more realistic and, indeed, equivocal (which usually means more complex and subtle, really). Sadly, modeling realism is unlikely to happen, at least in my lifetime. Add to this the utter obliviousness of the average journo — who looks at models as if they were magic — and it means that we’re going to continue to see these kind of models, and media stories, for a very long time. The wisecrack “Is that true, or did you read about it in legacy media?” is especially apropos here.
“A prediction model is not designed to predict the future. It is designed to persuade people to act in a desired manner.” Scott Adams
That also applies to 95% of climate change literature.
Obviously the reason they used models instead of 2 years of direct observational data is because only the models can be manipulated to show the desired outcome. Real life data refutes their conclusions. Models that exclude/minimize natural immunity, exaggerate the vaccine efficacy and duration of protection are guaranteed to give the desired result.
A simple counter point is that events where all people were required to be vaccinated still had transmission. That includes cruise ships, naval ships and Antarctic research stations.
Not that reality matters. This study was commissioned and designed to support Trudeau’s Liberal government agenda…not to perform good, solid science. You would think the researchers would be embarrassed to produce such obviously junk science.
Mission accomplished.
The HR departments and government goons will use this to justify vaccine mandates.
They can go on demonizing the unvaccinated and manipulating the sheep into hating their neighbors.
Fiddling the parameters a small bit would justify removing the mandates.
“One in eight Canadians believe vaccine myths, survey reveals
The most widely held myth was ‘researchers rushed the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, so its effectiveness and safety cannot be trusted'”
https://torontosun.com/health/one-in-eight-canadians-believe-vaccine-myths-survey-reveals
Those vaccines that are ‘95% effective’…….er ‘85% effective’……….er…’45% effective’…..er….?
The vaccines that were issued under emergency use regulations might have been rushed?
The media must have detected a lack of turgidity in the public’s covidboners and are becoming concerned that the panic could end.
If the covid panic ends then their covid welfare from PM Tar Baby could end too.
So they want to demonize anyone not of the Covid Borg.
““One in eight Canadians believe vaccine myths, survey reveals”
Like…its worse than the flu?
‘member THAT one?
For additional edification, take a look at the Editorial Board and their credentials.
If I were a practicing medical doctor, I would be very cautious of taking anything from CMAJ at face value. My patients lives would depend upon it.
The CMAJ has even published BS propaganda articles put out by The HAMAS doctors.
“Vaids”?
But more likely (or ‘..as well as..’)….
…”They ignored a thousand other variables all so they could have a simple, tractable model that tells vaccine enthusiasts what they want to hear.”
So, this shill for the Big Pharma cherry picks some data and formulates a paper stating what he claims the data shows. The “proven” result is then sent to every Liberal paid for news outlet in the area and beyond who quote the “proven” result” in harmony. I’m shocked that Justin Trudeau wasn’t the one to have peer reviewed it, after all he claimed to be a math teacher among other things. Pure WEF/Liberal propaganda to usher in the vaccine passport and digital money soon after.
FYI CMAJ Disclaimer: All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association or its subsidiaries.
If it’s in the CMAJ it’s because no reputable medical journal would give it a second look.
True. Actually, this paper is so without merit that I am wondering if they paid to get it published.
I think everything Dr. Fisman says needs to be viewed with some skepticism at best. As Andy Lee pointed out, not only is he paid by Pfizer and AstraZeneca, he also has been bankrolled by other reputable groups such as the WE Foundation. How none of the MSM is pointing out this blatant conflict of interest is beyond me.
https://twitter.com/RealAndyLeeShow/status/1518638672345636864?s=20&t=h-y64z3nikvQWIyp-I7QTQ
If it takes money from the government, it ain’t trust worthy!
Colby Cosh, my word. I visited his blog years ago, then he let it go and I lost that connection. So happy to find him again, I signed up for the newsletter.
I live in Florida and often shared his writing on a little blog (now defunct) where I was allowed to be a contributor (The Black Republican). It will be interesting to catch up. I always admired his slant.
And after 2+ years ..??
What do we know.?
1: The VAX is totally INEFFECTIVE (at preventing or immunizing against covsars2)
2: After 3 doses – ones immune system is SERIOUSLY degraded such that VAIDS is a real concern.
3: HCQ, IVM & Mono Clonal Anti Bodies all Work EXTREMELY well and as such are BANNED.
Masks have Zero Efficacy and as such are promoted. (if they did, they be banned too).
4: This shitshow was planned with a Goal of diminishing the population of Western Hemisphere Nations…with a healthy side order of profits for PHARMA, BlackRock & Vanguard, the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Soros etc.
5: EVERY Western Government/Politicians from Mayor on up, Every Western Health Authority incl. the WHO, CDC, NIH, FDA, NIAID, DARPA, USAMRIID were all involved from Day 1…and it was under the auspices of the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM / DEEP STATE / GLOBALIST operative leadership.
6: EVERY Western Media outlet 100% Compromised and in LOCKSTEP with the above.
7: TRUDEAU, OBAMA, FAUCI, and many others 100% FULLY involved.
NOW……. had most folks ACTUALLY & CRITICALLY considered the final results of the Diamond Princess and USN CVN71..?? Apr 2020 – we would not be here today.
15 folks out of ~9785 ended up dying…a NORMAL Death rate considering 14 of those were on a cruise ship 90% of whom were SENIORS with 1 or more co-morbidities who could just as easily succumbed to the Seasonal Flu.
100% Psyop SCAM….and in my opinion..??
A Conditioning Test Run
Does this claim of greater risk from the un-vaxxxed have any percent or other quantitative measure published? How does it compare to the risk of getting sick from the vaxxx itself let alone the greater risk of getting CV19 simply if you are triple vaxxxed; which is greater risk than if only double vaxxed. So many missing measurements for a claim of practicing science.
Its not practicing science, its explaining “the science”…!! (Insert tremendous god like music here…)
This article is so transparently weak and manipulative, it makes it clear that there is no evidence for unvaxed being any more of a risk for transmission than vaxed. Given the enthusiasm with which this article was picked up by the media, it is also pretty obvious that they’ve got nothing. I have seen other very weak efforts to try to make it look like unvaxed put others at risk. It’s all just spin, innuendo, and speculation. If they had any solid evidence, that would be front page news. I am afraid ( for them) that trying to bring attention to this flawed mathematical model just gives the game away. They have nothing.
Also I have seen data indicating that in a number of places (Canada, UK are examples) the Triple vaxed are more at risk for Omicron. This is pretty straight forward data. Why is there no mention of this in the media? I would think it is pretty important for people to know before marching off to get their 4th shot. Isn’t it at least time for the media to start asking questions?