Johnson's equation

FartingGnome

FartingGnome

Well-known member
Surprised nobody's picked up on this gem from last night's broadcast ....

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What absolute, total bollox. How can you have an alert level 1 to 5 when the Number of Infections runs into the hundreds of thousands? And what measurable difference would it make if the R value was 0 or 100?

If that's the quality of his scientific advice I despair. I'm making the reasonable assumption that it got the go-ahead from Cummings and his freak show. In which case it shows the whole thing up for what it is. Complete chaos and confusion from a rabble of charlatans.
 
FartingGnome said:
Surprised nobody's picked up on this gem from last night's broadcast ....

View attachment 2725
What absolute, total bollox. How can you have an alert level 1 to 5 when the Number of Infections runs into the hundreds of thousands? And what measurable difference would it make if the R value was 0 or 100?

If that's the quality of his scientific advice I despair. I'm making the reasonable assumption that it got the go-ahead from Cummings and his freak show. In which case it shows the whole thing up for what it is. Complete chaos and confusion from a rabble of charlatans.
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The scientific world have rubbished it to bits on twitter
In a nutshell - meaningless *****
 
My wife saw it and immediately went 'that means nothing to me'. Which was exactly what they hoped would happen with all 66 million of us.

I think we have to assume that as the level is currently "3.5" and the R0 is 0.5-0.9, the number of infections are currently sitting at 2.6-3? But what exactly does 'number of infections' mean if not literal?
 
Explained here in the spectator

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Picture_1.jpeg
 
'Following the science' is nonsense, it's a government obfuscation.

The scientific method requires data and methods to be made publicly available, in detail, so that it can be subject to un-bias peer reviewed from the broader scientific community. The government have not shared data + methods, therefore it is not following the scientific method, and cannot be classed as 'following the science'.

The situation is that the the government have a hypothesis that 'an outcome' (not necessarily less deaths) can be achieved by following specific policy and guidelines that they have defined (or vaguely defined). It's about as far away from following the science as homeopathy
 
Glover_elbow said:
Explained here in the spectator

2731-891eaf39b110fc7c0c9bc80a7c7f5a3a.jpg
View attachment 2731
Click to expand...

Trouble is that representation has the total number of infections, including many now irrelevant historical values, which don't reflect the current situation. I think I know what they're getting at but from what I can see it's muddled and the presentation of it as an equation just makes me think they're deliberately trying to baffle people with pseudo science. How is this helpful?
 
I must be honest I assumed it was a simplified graphic (i.e we'll take into account x and y when setting the level...) not the actual formula used!

I'm not sure of the relevance of number of infections, surely the R number is sufficient on its own as an indicator of "success"? Presumably used an indicator of NHS capacity v demand.
 
FartingGnome said:
Trouble is that representation has the total number of infections, including many now irrelevant historical values, which don't reflect the current situation. I think I know what they're getting at but from what I can see it's muddled and the presentation of it as an equation just makes me think they're deliberately trying to baffle people with pseudo science. How is this helpful?
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Infections per day might be a better variable
 
changingman said:
I must be honest I assumed it was a simplified graphic (i.e we'll take into account x and y when setting the level...) not the actual formula used!

I'm not sure of the relevance of number of infections, surely the R number is sufficient on its own as an indicator of "success"? Presumably used an indicator of NHS capacity v demand.
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If you have 10000 positives per day and an R of 1.1, the risk would be greater than 1 positive per day and an R of 1.1
 
Sorry Bear, you've lost me - maths was never my strong point!

I think my issue is the interdependence between the two variables (R + No of infections) - it doesn't feel like a straight forward summing up in this instance?
 
changingman said:
Sorry Bear, you've lost me - maths was never my strong point!

I think my issue is the interdependence between the two variables (R + No of infections) - it doesn't feel like a straight forward summing up in this instance?
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It's isn't unless you treat it as imaginary. If they'd just given the picturisation, it with have made more sense.
 
The graph is just as nonsensical as the "equation".

R is the only measure needed. As long as R<1 then we are moving in the right direction the rest is noise to confuse and distract the stupid.
 
Can see how it works if the values are taken as complex numbers and they're plotted on what we used to call an Argand diagram (ie the Spectator 2D plot).
 
Muttley said:
The graph is just as nonsensical as the "equation".

R is the only measure needed. As long as R<1 then we are moving in the right direction the rest is noise to confuse and distract the stupid.
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If the R moves from 0.9 to 0.95, the actions that need to be taken are different if the infection rate is 10000 per day compared with 1 per day.
 
And that is the crux of our problem. Infections are stubbornly high.
Perhaps, as we have no been asked to be alert, we will see the rate drop significantly :)
 
bear66 said:
If the R moves from 0.9 to 0.95, the actions that need to be taken are different if the infection rate is 10000 per day compared with 1 per day.
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That is a rather extreme example. If the infection rate is 10k or 5k then as long as R remains below 1 you maintain a manageable total. If the infection rate is 1 per day the level of infection is so negligible as to be indistinguishable from background noise. I agree that what you really want is to reduce R as much as possible to say 0.5 which would see the infections safely dissipate quite quickly.

Which means R is the most important measure and easy to understand.
 
Muttley said:
That is a rather extreme example. If the infection rate is 10k or 5k then as long as R remains below 1 you maintain a manageable total. If the infection rate is 1 per day the level of infection is so negligible as to be indistinguishable from background noise. I agree that what you really want is to reduce R as much as possible to say 0.5 which would see the infections safely dissipate quite quickly.

Which means R is the most important measure and easy to understand.
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I think it's like a risk / consequence graph. There is one quadrant that's a no-no, one that's fine and the other two borderline.
 
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