I watched Governor Walz’s presser last night. My impressions (borrowing a bit from David Strom):<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Old And In The Way <\/strong>– The data used in this model is 3 weeks old. The pandemic is three months old in Minnesota at this point. That means the model is ignoring a solid quarter, almost a third, of the data available – and, being most recent, very possibly the best data. I hate to throw the word “useless” around willy-nilly – but if this alone doesn’t make the model useless, I’m completely bumfuzzled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Older And Out Of The Way<\/strong> – The model don’t distinguish between populations in hotspots like Hennepin County and the rest of the state. In Minnesota, at present,99% of the Covid deaths are concentrated in 3% of the population. 80+% of the deaths involve 1% of the state. And yet they apply those percentages to the entire population. This is the sort of thing that’d get sent back for rework in the private sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And basing mortality predictions across the entire population on numbers that are so flawed at the concept level is bad math at best, dishonest at worst, and a tool used to deceive the people either way – the equivalent of a Star-Tribune poll that draws statewide conclusions based on a massive oversampling of Minneapolis DFLers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Under Bus Shoved<\/strong> – And since the overwhelming majority of deaths involve people in long term care, the model tacitly assumes that nursing home residents will do nothing whatsoever <\/em>to protect their population. Which is possible, although there are a whoooole lot of lawyers out there who will likely impel them to try to do a lot better than they are, sooner than later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The model banks on long-term incompetence – natural, perhaps, for bureaucrats, but not necessarily representative of the population at large. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Conclusion<\/strong> – the Walz administration is using this model to flim-flam a state that, signs show, is getting tired of being lied, condescended and talked down to. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I watched Governor Walz’s presser last night. My impressions (borrowing a bit from David Strom): Old And In The Way – The data used in this model is 3 weeks old. The pandemic is three months old in Minnesota at this point. That means the model is ignoring a solid quarter, almost a third, of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[416,2],"tags":[423],"class_list":["post-74131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid19","category-minnesota-politics","tag-the-endless-emergency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74132,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74131\/revisions\/74132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}