Posted on 04/10/2020 5:23:10 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Relying on a model developed by experts at the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Department of Public Health, Governor Tim Walz issued a broad shutdown order on March 25. Governor Walz asserted that, under the model’s projections, up to 74,000 Minnesotans would die of the Wuhan virus absent the shutdown. Later we learned that, under the model’s projection, 50,000 Minnesotans would die with the shutdown. In his most recent remarks, extending the shutdown order to May 4, Governor Walz advised that the model wasn’t to be taken literally.
To people like me, who spent time trying to figure how those numbers could work, Walz should have borrowed the line from Animal House. “You [screwed] up — you trusted us!” If Walz and his experts didn’t pull the numbers from thin air, they may as well have. The death toll ramped up yesterday from 39 to 50, along with the median age of decedents from age 86 to 87. The total hospitalized in ICU as of today is given as 63. (The Minnesota Department of Health Situation Update is posted here.)
The model has become a political issue. State authorities have refused so far to release it or the underlying analysis. Our friend Kevin Roche calls for the release of the model and other related information in this column published by the Star Tribune today.
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
I first saw it about 1979, when a computer model of a Copper-Zinc mine was used to justify taxation levels to make it unprofitable.
The legislature of Wisconsin believed the model, passed the taxes, and the Crandon mine was never developed.
Later, I found an error in the model. It was one character which treated a cost as income, a change from a negative to a positive.
The entire model was invalidated.
Models are what corrupt academics use to push policy the way they want it to go.
When we start looking at how “the models” shape out daily lives, the result and their power over us is frightening. They appear to replicate life as a proven science and we actually put our faith in them. In this case, we put our country’s FATE at dire risk. But as we learned with the political polls (themselves models) they are just another opinion. Do you take your umbrella to work based in the daily model? Or do you keep one at work and one at home? Prepared but not dependent. We are now wary of political polls, hopefully we will more wary of “the model clearly demonstrates yadda yadda.” These “models” may have damaged our country beyond repair. (The climate change models should have been the canary in the coal mine.)
Blow past the sovereign immunity defense, sue the Governor under the international crimes against humanity!
under the model’s projection, 50,000 Minnesotans would die with the shutdown. In his most recent remarks, extending the shutdown order to May 4, Governor Walz advised that the model wasn’t to be taken literally.
To people like me, who spent time trying to figure how those numbers could work, Walz should have borrowed the line from Animal House. “You [screwed] up — you trusted us!” If Walz and his experts didn’t pull the numbers from thin air, they may as well have. The death toll ramped up yesterday from 39 to 50, along with the median age of decedents from age 86 to 87.
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So the model was only off by a factor of 1,000. It served the purpose to generate hysteria to shut down the country’s economy.
Those with a political agenda (power at ANY cost) are destroying the economy. It’s “Let us rule, or die.”
A long quote that bears on this:
“ Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
That quote is from President Dwight David Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, the same one in which he warns of the military industrial complex, which the Left has bandied about regularly for the last 60 years.
In this passage above, we see he also warns of government / big science in a similar way. We are seeing today what he warned of then with the whole Global Warming / Climate Change shtick (“we can fix the weather if you let us tax and control you heavily”).
The pandemic response is perhaps similar. Does anyone really think Fauci and Brix are the be-all and end-all on wisdom on this event? Yet they have heavily, likely much too heavily, influenced events.
Back to work May 1st, Minnesota!
Using models like they use polls. Both methods have this in common: tell me the result you want and I’ll produce it.
“Let us rule, or die.”
Democrats strategy. We will cause mass hysteria, violent protests and wide spread chaos. Then we’ll tell you the only way to get back to normal is to vote in Democrats. Kind of sounds like organized crime protection racket.
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