Let’s start from the beginning. Nothing like that would have happened without the mathematical models of a few epidemiologists, and virologists of high reputation who have proclaimed that they are not put into the equation the pandemic (epidemic on a global scale) of Covid-19 (the infectious disease) caused by SARS-COV-2 “(the name of the ” novel coronavirus “). Three weeks prior to our confinement, hexagonal, February 25, 2020, the drafting of the LCI was the echo of the dark projections of professor Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist of infectious diseases at the University of Harvard (USA). It was stated then that ” 40% to 70% of the world population would be infected within a year “. It will confirm its forecasts for the deadly march 2, during an interview on CBS.
Which had the scoop of his study published on the website of theImperial College of London on 16 march. If the British rejected the containment, his model predicted that the Uk would be grief-stricken 510.000 dead. Almost all of the deaths each year in the uk. Who can believe it ? While we were all still confined, the journal Nature, received march 30, a project of fast publishing to an article that was accepted on 22 may, and published online on 6 June. Its conclusions trumpeting that the containment in 11 european countries had helped to save 3.1 million lives.
The crystal ball of Neil Ferguson has invariably cheated heavily in its projections, as shown in the following table :
Table pathogen overestimation
We also have our oracles in France
Pr Jérôme Salomon, Director-general of health, who is one of the faces that we will remember most from this crisis, while every night he égrainait tirelessly in the balance sheet of macabre of the Covid for the past 24 hours, said on June 16, 2020 before the parliamentary Commission of inquiry that the auditionnait, that ” the French teams of the mathematical modeling are also of very high level “. It must be said that one of his predecessors at the SPO, Pr William Dab, epidemiologist, march 17, at the microphone of France Info had supported the choice of the containment by crediting the English study.
Pascal Crepey, one of the modellers of the models, interviewed on BFMTV on April 2, interpreting the curve of the “new severe cases per day,” argued that ” if the containment had not occurred, we would have been much higher and in a situation much more desperate,” On what basis was there for such an assertion ? Had there been a control group that was not confined to this comparison ? Pascal Crepey and his colleagues were eager to publish on the website of the EHESP, school of advanced studies in public health, their analysis (without peer review), April 22, in full extension of the containment, arguing that 60,000 of our compatriots would have been saved from inevitable death (10% of the annual mortality in France). Immediately, the Minister Olivier Véran is taking this success in an interview with France Inter on April 24.
New cases serious per day
However, the “Neil Ferguson” in French, was embodied, without a doubt, by Arnaud Fontanet, epidemiologist, member of the Scientific Council.
He stood in front of the mission of the parliamentary inquiry on June 18, the position is as follows : “Then, the confinement, the date on which the decision was made, we had no choice. The emergency was in the réanimations, in the big East and the hospitals in the North of Paris had seen an influx of patients in a number of quite unusual and of clinical forms of the extremely severe lung inflammatory…, we had the experience of Italy, 7 to 10 days before us in which the situation is amplified… and also of elements derived from mathematical models that we suggested that we were on a start of an exponential curve, and that if it was planned a few days or even weeks, on our estimates, you were in a situation where the réanimations would be unable to take charge of the patients… He had to first save the intensivists, and the patients who were in the réanimations and the services of infectious diseases “.
Arnaud Fontanet
As this was not enough, the Scientific Council had another modeler, Simon Cauchemez, also of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, less publicized.
Why the forecasts of epidemiologists, modellers are they so wrong ?
The mathematical models they rely upon are very complex, with a large number of variables, systematically parameterized on the ” worst-case scenarios “. No wonder then that they are wrong a lot. At the bottom, the modelling is perfectly consistent with the precautionary principle pushed to the absurd, that our public policy makers have come to cherish, because they can then authorise the measures are the most draconian in order not to be able to lend the flank to criticism (no One reproached never a politician having too much done).
François PESTY, is a Doctor of Pharmacy, former intern of hospitals of Paris. He is also a graduate of a great school of commerce in Paris and San Francisco. After his 4 years of internship, he spent over 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry, in 3 laboratories, the management of marketing and sales. In 2005, he became an independent consultant, consultant to support drug more secure (in the hospital), more relevant and more efficient. He has participated since 2012 at the annual organization of the symposium ” Over – and Under – medicalization, surdiagnostics and surtraitements “.
Author(s): François Pesty for FranceSoir
