Double Down Hallucination
Double Down Hallucination
Updated model claims 3.26 million lives saved: Comments on State Capacity Covidology: Part 2
The Commonwealth Fund is back with another miracle estimate. This is the research group, you may recall, which the State Capacity Covidians relied on to claim that the the Covid-19 vaccines saved more than one million lives in the U.S. in 2021. We analyzed the Commonwealth model several weeks ago, noting its implausible implication that, without vaccines, 4.5 times more people would have died in 2021 than in the unvaccinated pandemic year of 2020.
Back to the drawing board, one might have thought. Time for some self-reflection. Let’s sharpen our pencils. No such luck.
Commonwealth’s update doesn’t correct obvious mistakes. Instead, it doubles down – literally – producing truly jarring hallucinations. Although 2022 was dominated by the milder Omicron variants, the update claims the vaccines saved 2.168 million lives – twice as many as claimed in 2021. The model also suggests, without the vaccines, Covid-19 would have killed 2.42 million Americans in 2022. That’s an astounding 6.9 times the number who died from Covid-19 in 2020. (As far as we can tell, the model does not contemplate any possible vaccine harms, which further reduces its plausibility.)
Below, we update our chart, starting with Our World in Data cumulative U.S. Covid deaths, then annotating it with our comments in blue, pink, and gray.
Consider that in 2019, the total number of deaths from all causes in the U.S. was 2.85 million. Total U.S. deaths in 2010 were 2.47 million. Commonwealth estimates that in 2022, absent vaccines, 2.42 million would have died of the milder Omicron variants alone, all other causes excluded.
As we surmised last time, this unmoored mindset, exemplified and egged on by innumerate analysis, helps explain why so many people in public health and public policy could get so many pandemic diagnoses and prescriptions so very, very wrong.
Comments on State Capacity Covidology
The One Million Lives Saved Claim: Part 1
Double Down Hallucination: Part 2
Who Really Wanted to Speed Remedies?: Part 3
Defending Steph Curry: A Computer Model: Part 4
Where Did All the Workers Go?: Part 5
A Narrative That’s Too Big To Fail: Part 6
Mortality Play: 2020 vs. 2021-22: Part 7
Japan Matches Germany's 2022 Mortality Spike: Part 9
Society of Actuaries Shows Continued Young Adult Mortality Spike: Part 10
Dr. Hotez’s Data Is Highly Flawed: Part 11
Covid and the Golly Folly: The blind spot of gee whiz technology futurism: Part 12
Funny timing. Soon after my post, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on CNN and cited the Commonwealth Fund study. https://twitter.com/jbsay/status/1603141168929325056