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Bonus Quotation of the Day…

is from pages 135-136 of Scott Atlas’s important 2021 book, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID From Destroying America:

This conclusion was inherently nonscientific – modeling that something might occur, and then because it did not occur with a given intervention, concluding that the intervention was effective. That was not proof of anything at all; it was circular reasoning. Why couldn’t the explanation be that the model’s prediction was wrong? Indeed, modelers had concocted a scenario in which [covid] cases would keep spreading as if everyone was equally susceptible, without regard for increasing immunity or seasonal effects – all known to have occurred in every respiratory virus pandemic over the past 130 years.

DBx: I say again that few academics have fueled as much destruction of life, liberty, property, and prosperity as has the reckless Imperial College modeler Neil Ferguson. Not to be excused, of course, are the legions of politicians and bureaucrats who took his and his team’s model-predictions seriously and without regard for collateral damage from lockdowns.

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