Unpacking cow manure

What’s intermediate between is and isn’t? Scarsin’s folly

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Mar 22

RE: Caution urged as rules become choice.  By Joanna Frketich.  The Hamilton Spectator 24 Mar 22.

“Scarsin Forecasting showed two-thirds of a projected 26,600 spring infections could be prevented.”  There’s a lot of cow manure in that statement.  Let me unpack it for you.

First, statistics do not imply a cause-effect relationship among variables.  When Scarsin says, “Our model forecasts 26,600 infections between Mar 21 and June 20” but “this figure reduces to 8867 if we leave our masking coefficient unchanged” all this amounts to is fun with figures.  ‘Showing’ in the scientific sense didn’t occur.

There is no cause-effect relationship here, though the weak minded and less informed are invited to believe there is.  Belief is why Scarsin gets paid, astrologists too.  There might be far fewer cases than 26,600 for reasons not accounted for by Scarsin’s model.  Or far more should a new variant emerge.

In particular, Scarsin can have no cause-effect relationship between mask-wearing and spread of the disease because there isn’t one in real life.  Modelling mask wearing with disease spread is a mug’s game, but if you bury that in enough other manure you can’t particularize where the smell is coming from.  That’s the trick.

When Hamilton’s medical officer of health, Dr. Elizabeth Richardson says “we need to transition from requirement to choice,” perhaps she can explain what the intermediate steps are?  There’s either compulsion, or there isn’t.  Seem pretty clear to me.  Maybe Dr. Richardson could be asked to explain what’s between logical contradictories, and our understanding of logic can be added to.

Scarsin’s folly

It’s been widely reported that Scarsin Forecasting has forecasted 26,600 new cases of COVID in the Hamilton area this spring.  Let’s do a little math!.

Assuming spring to be 91 days long, to reach their figure there would have to be 292 new COVID cases per day for 91 days.  With a population of 550,000, Hamilton holds roughly 3.75 percent of Ontario’s population of 14.8 million.  If all of Ontario were suffering new cases at the rate that Scarsin predicts for Hamilton, Ontario would be seeing 7787 new cases per day, something not seen since the peak of the most recent wave of the pandemic.  Since pandemics do ebb and flow, to have an average rate of near pandemic peak levels, it means that some awful peak is coming if Scarsin’s forecasted number is correct.

Hamilton does not live in isolation, and that awful peak would have to be coming to Ontario as a whole also.

For the last four weeks, Ontario’s daily average case number has bounced around 2,000 per day.  At this rate, on average, Hamilton would experience 75 new cases per day, and in 91 days a total of 6825 cases, a quarter of Scarsin’s forecast.  Scarsin, advocating for continued mask mandates, argues that their 26,600 can be reduced to 8867 if masks are retained.  This is still much more than the Ontario average applied to Hamilton.

We have a right to ask if Scarsin isn’t generating elaborate looking panic porn that justifies the evident desires of those who pay them.

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