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Monday, May 25, 2020

Thode: Gov. Wolf Faces Political Reality, Abandons "Data Driven" Approach to Re-Open

It appears that Governor Tom Wolf has abandoned his "data driven" approach to re-opening our state after his dirigisme has resulted in an unqualified failure, with two million Pennsylvanians out of work and an unemployment system unable to handle the load.

Steve Thode, a retired Lehigh University professor, has performed a valuable public service by crunching the numbers for us. He himself has recently observed how flawed the state system has been. By his calculations, we should be closed until July 11. But then a miracle happened.

Here's a chart on COVID-19 test results for Lehigh/NorCo over the past 4 weeks:


Testing has ramped up considerably over the past four weeks. However, the percentage of tests reported as "positive" has shrunk from 28.5% three weeks ago to only 8.6% this past week.

Now, my fearless forecasts for Lehigh/NorCo:


Note, as an extra special new forecast, I have added Governor Wolf's "data-driven" forecast which is called "Then A Miracle Happened." That forecast predicts, with utter certainty, that the 14-day average of new cases for Lehigh/NorCo will miraculously drop on June 5 - allowing Lehigh/NorCo to go to "Yellow" on the exact date the governor has decreed.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, my two forecasts have converged. My "Weighted" forecast and my "Unweighted" forecast both predict July 11 as the date the 14-day average of new cases will put Lehigh/NorCo in "Yellow."
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10 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 25, 2020 at 1:32 AM

    easy enough to see if projections are accurate==wait for the fifth of June.
    What happens when the number of new cases increase?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 25, 2020 at 4:45 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 25, 2020 at 8:06 AM

    Unfortunately, by July 15 the numbers in Lehigh and Northampton County are going to spike. The Governor is making a huge mistake. If one thing is coming out of this whole fiasco, that is, the people can't be trusted to do what needs to be done to get us over the hump. It is mostly the younger generation thumbing their noses at the true facts and statistics. God Bless our elderly population. God bless our medical staff. The worst is yet to come.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousMay 25, 2020 at 9:03 AM

    Governor has made a big mistake the way he handled this virus-he has hurt the pa people in many ways

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousMay 25, 2020 at 10:15 AM

    Wolf should beg forgiveness of the families of the nursing home patients he destroyed, at the same time destroying the businesses of all the self employed. He is a disaster. Unwilling to admit he focused on the wrong people.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousMay 25, 2020 at 8:30 PM

    Bernie can you link to the state's projections? I am on the PA DoH website now, and I can't find the forecast that Thode says Wolf is using.

    Without citing your sources, you can't convince me that Thode, a professor emeritus of Lehigh's real estate program has the epidemiological know-how to build a proper forecast, let alone one better than the state's DoH. And it certainly doesn't seem plausible that the state is relying on a forecast without confidence bounds.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Bernie O'HareMay 25, 2020 at 9:49 PM

    Given that the state DOH has no epidemiologists or infectious disease experts, you should not be so quick to accept what they say as Gospel. Steve Thode is no epidemiologist, but he is a numbers cruncher. Math is math.

    You get a D for research skills. Governor Wolf's Re-Opening plan can be found. He keeps adding and deleting a CMU dashboard to Scribd, of all places./ I have already given him an F.

    https://www.governor.pa.gov/process-to-reopen-pennsylvania/

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousMay 26, 2020 at 2:07 AM

    You have you own abacus, Bernie, and I have mine. Wolf did a good job protecting us and getting the curve reversed. He at least had a plan, which he revised. Yes, nursing homes were hit hard in several states, including ours. Our president's plan was and is for everyone to believe things are normal. They are not and won't be for several months.

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousMay 26, 2020 at 5:12 AM

    try
    https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/
    take your pick of various models.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousMay 26, 2020 at 4:48 PM

    Bernie O'Hare said...
    Given that the state DOH has no epidemiologists or infectious disease experts, you should not be so quick to accept what they say as Gospel. Steve Thode is no epidemiologist, but he is a numbers cruncher. Math is math.

    You get a D for research skills. Governor Wolf's Re-Opening plan can be found. He keeps adding and deleting a CMU dashboard to Scribd, of all places./ I have already given him an F.

    https://www.governor.pa.gov/process-to-reopen-pennsylvania/

    The gov. has indicated that he has consulted several epidemiologists. Thet don't have to work for DOH.

    ReplyDelete

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