The epidemiological model that drove the world to shut down was ‘buggy’; "A mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming"

American Thinker ^ | 05/17/2020 | Andrea Widburg

[SeekAndFind]

Early in the Wuhan virus’s trajectory, the British government announced that it was going to go for a herd immunity approach (that is, the approach Sweden eventually used). Because the government is Tory, the left-leaning media insisted this would kill every Briton.

These arguments gained weight when epidemiologist Neil Ferguson introduced his model showing that anything other than a total lockdown would kill over 500,000 Britons and 2.2 million Americans. Britain and America instantly stopped in their tracks. Only now, months later, are we learning that Ferguson’s model was a buggy mess.

The British Telegraph reports that the disgraced epidemiologist, who broke quarantine for his sex life, had a fatally flawed model:

The model, credited with forcing the Government to make a U-turn and introduce a nationwide lockdown, is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming”, says David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco.

“In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust.”

[snip]

“There appears to be a bug in either the creation or re-use of the network file. If we attempt two completely identical runs, only varying in that the second should use the network file produced by the first, the results are different,” Edinburgh researchers wrote on the Github file.

The same article notes what many in conservative circles knew long ago, which is that Neil Ferguson has a track record of making inaccurate, apocalyptic predictions:

Concerns, in particular, over Ferguson’s model have been raised, with Konstantin Boudnik, vice-president of architecture at WANdisco, saying his track record in modelling doesn’t inspire confidence.

[rktman]

Oh, does it resemble a CLIMAGEDDON chart? :-)

[Carriage Hill]

“...a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a...

Hey, I like Capellini d’angelo Angel Hair Pasta! Properly presented with lobster, crab, shrimp etc, it’s a work of art.

[Recompennation]

The left gruebers us again, never let a crisis go to waste.

[Nifster]

Ferguson and his modeling has never predicted anything correctly ever

[Mouton]

No problem, just adjust the input and the output matches the theory. Count every death as a chinese virus and you get the number you want. If that does not work, salt the nursing homes with sick people, lock them up, let them stew, and more numbers.

[tbw2]

This guy has a HISTORY of wildly inflated disease estimates.

Predicted 150 million dead from bird flu.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/30/birdflu.jamessturcke

Predicted tens of thousands dead from mad cow disease.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/jan/09/research.highereducation

[tbw2]

This guy has a HISTORY of wildly inflated disease estimates.

Predicted 150 million dead from bird flu.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/30/birdflu.jamessturcke

Predicted tens of thousands dead from mad cow disease.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/jan/09/research.highereducation

[CodeToad]