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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRichard A. Epstein behind the The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Admin.
Yet another Libertarian.
The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration
President Trump, who at one point called the coronavirus pandemic an invisible enemy and said it made him a wartime President, has in recent days questioned its seriousness, tweeting, WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. Trump said repeatedly that he wanted the country to reopen by Easter, April 12th, contradicting the advice of most health officials. (On Sunday, he backed down and extended federal social-distancing guidelines for at least another month.) According to the Washington Post, Conservatives close to Trump and numerous administration officials have been circulating an article by Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution, titled Coronavirus Perspective, which plays down the extent of the spread and the threat.
Epstein, a professor at New York University School of Law, published the article on the Web site of the Hoover Institution, on March 16th. In it, he questioned the World Health Organizations decision to declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, said that public officials have gone overboard, and suggested that about five hundred people would die from covid-19 in the U.S. Epstein later updated his estimate to five thousand, saying that the previous number had been an error. So far, there have been more than two thousand coronavirus-related fatalities in America; epidemiologists projections of the total deaths range widely, depending on the success of social distancing and the availability of medical resources, but they tend to be much higher than Epsteins. (On Sunday, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, estimated that there could be between a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand deaths in the U.S.) In a follow-up article, published on March 23rd and titled Coronavirus Overreaction, Epstein wrote, Progressives think they can run everyones lives through central planning, but the state of the economy suggests otherwise. Looking at the costs, the public commands have led to a crash in the stock market, and may only save a small fraction of the lives that are at risk.
SNIP
You wrote last week, In the United States, if the total death toll increases at about the same rate, the current 67 deaths should translate into about 500 deaths at the end. We are currently at eight hundred deathsover eight hundred deaths. [This was true when we spoke; the number is now over two thousand.]
First of all, let me just say I wrote an amendment to that, the thing I regret most in that whole paper. But I was not so much interested in explaining why my number was right. I was interested in explaining why the other projections were wrong.
O.K., but your number was surpassed in about a week, and now were already
I understand that, but the point about that is that, first of all, there was a simple stupid error, which is you would never want to put it in a model that total deaths in the United States relative to the world would be one per cent. So if you just inflated it to five per cent or ten per cent, then all of a sudden youve got a number which is either five or ten times as high.
Secondly, suppose I should have been wiser in this and said, as I referred to the flu vaccine and later on to the H1N1 situation, if those are your benchmarks, then the number goes up to say between fifteen thousand and forty thousand deaths, as opposed to the one million-plus that are projected. [The Times model projected, without interventions by governments or citizens, a million deaths in the U.S.; with such interventions, the model showed that number dramatically decreasing.] And, remember, the one million-plus is on a model which is universal and worldwide, and you should expect to see something like that somewhere else. And theres no evidence whatsoever that any of the situations, even in Italy, is going to approach the kinds of numbers that you had there. And so I am truly sorry about that [five hundred] number. I regard it as the single worst public-relations gaffe Ive made in my entire life. But the question to ask, Isaac, is not whether I chose the right number but whether I had the right model.
"A simple stupid error"
Lots more at
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-contrarian-coronavirus-theory-that-informed-the-trump-administration
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)"What a nimrod! What a ultra-maroon!"
JHB
(37,132 posts)Considering that we're already halfway to your revised number, it's pretty clear the answer is "no".
Perhaps you should examine the false assumptions that went into your model. Why should we assume that was any better than your proofreading?
Botany
(70,291 posts)... that gave him his desired outcome. In science you look at known and proven facts and or
data and then and then plug those into a viable model which depending on the quality of the
facts, data, and model you can predict an outcome.
Besides he is a right wing lawyer not an epidemiologist, a biologist, or a Dr..
This is no difference to Trump lashing onto using a medicine for malaria for C-19 which was
pushed on some wing nut web site.
JHB
(37,132 posts)"Model" = line of BS dressed up with carefully selected verbiage and/or numbers.
GusBob
(7,286 posts)Sick man
malaise
(267,823 posts)When did a law professor become an expert on a public health pandemic?
bucolic_frolic
(42,676 posts)dalton99a
(81,068 posts)malaise
(267,823 posts)He should be fired from NYU for spreading dangerous lies about a pandemic.
Folks should petition NYU. If Fux can be sued so can this asshole.
groundloop
(11,488 posts)and instead taking advise that's more to their liking from self declared experts. This is just like the morons on fox news* who talk about climate change not being as bad as everyone says and citing opinions from an 'expert' whose background is economics. They just can't bother to be inconvenienced by truth and the opinions of real experts.
malaise
(267,823 posts)That's the only thing that matters
jrthin
(4,825 posts)scrabblequeen40
(334 posts)dalton99a
(81,068 posts)gibraltar72
(7,486 posts)superpatriotman
(6,232 posts)Best to show them as unreliable and unqualified and follow the science.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,788 posts)They think "exponential" simply means "big" or "fast", partly because the stupid media use it that way too.
But if a LAWYER is going to expound on epidemics they need to understand the most basic thing about disease spread. Exponential is not additive or multiplicative. It is a power function.
Doubling every three days does not mean 4x after 6, then 6x after 9, 8x after 12, 10x after 15, and 12x after 18. No.
It means 4x after 6, 8x after 9, 16x after 12, 32x after 15, and 64x after 18.
dalton99a
(81,068 posts)Botany
(70,291 posts)Trump on Coronavirus: "I'm Not Sure Anybody Even Knows What It Is"; "You Can Call It A Germ,
You Can Call It A Flu"
BTW from years ago @ Ohio U I had a microbiology prof who always said, "There is no such
thing as a germ. We have viruses, bacteria, fungi, microbes, and so on but we have no germs."
True Blue American
(17,972 posts)My Grandson is now taking his classes in his bedroom there!
Botany
(70,291 posts)n/t
True Blue American
(17,972 posts)Me, I remember,I was middle aged!
paleotn
(17,781 posts)They get run over. Another case of the death of expertise.
Hey, Ineptstein. Stick to the law an leave the science of epidemiology to those who've spent like most of their freaking lives studying the subject. Fucking idiot.
malaise
(267,823 posts)Perfect
Thanks for saying what I was thinking.
Hugin
(32,778 posts)Shades of Dr. Strangelove.
LiberalFighter
(50,504 posts)ancianita
(35,813 posts)bucolic_frolic
(42,676 posts)Lonestarblue
(9,880 posts)Over the past three years, Ive watched as Trump lurched from one idea to another, often contradicting his own ideas. At one point, I believed that he had early onset dementia, following in his father's footsteps. I now think that his public appearances where he has slurred his words or been unable to recall precise words are related to the excess of drugs he takes to give him enough energy to get through a day. His inability to correctly pronounce words when reading from a teleprompter may well be vision problems as he is too vain to wear glasses and may not be adaptable for contacts.
Those thoughts leave me with one conclusion. We cannot blame his inhumanity and his deliberate cruelty on dementia. Donald Trumps personality and his total lack of concern for anyone but Trump are to blame for how he behaves here and on the world stage. Im sure he believes that any number of deaths are just the price to be paid for his re-election.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)Shouldnt such things be left to doctors and epidemiologists?
-Laelth
muriel_volestrangler
(101,154 posts)as if he has it (journalist in bold):
You know nothing about the subject but are so confident that youre going to say that Im a crackpot.
No. Richard
Thats what youre saying, isnt it? Thats what youre saying?
Im not saying anything of the sort.
Admit to it. Youre saying Im a crackpot.
Im not saying anything of the
Well, what am I then? Im an amateur? Youre the great scholar on this?
No, no. Im not a great scholar on this.
Tell me what you think about the quality of the work!
O.K. Im going to tell you. I think the fact that I am not a great scholar on this and Im able to find these flaws or these holes in what you wrote is a sign that maybe you shouldve thought harder before writing it.
What it shows is that you are a complete intellectual amateur. Period.
O.K. Can I ask you one more question?
You just dont know anything about anything. Youre a journalist. Would you like to compare your résumé to mine?
No, actually, I would not.
Then good. Then maybe what you want to do is to say, Gee, Im not quite sure that this is right. Im going to check with somebody else. But, you want to come at me hard, I am going to come back harder at you. And then if I cant jam my fingers down your throat, then I am not worth it. But you have basically gone over the line. If you want to ask questions, ask questions. I put forward a model. But a little bit of respect.
The journalist, in addition to the holes he has already found in the article, got actual experts to look over the interview, and they said Epstein is full of shit. Notice that, like Trump, this idiot thinks that he's due "respect", and that pointing out his errors is disrespectful.
localroger
(3,605 posts)Which is exactly not what exponential growth does, you ignorant fuck
True Blue American
(17,972 posts)Valuable time was lost, thanks to this and the help will not be enough to avoid a recession!
https://americanindependent.com/donald-trump-coronavirus-economy-2020-election-stimulus-package-congress-covid-19/
greatauntoftriplets
(175,698 posts)I wonder if he's also anti-vaxx.