Life By Model

Remember way back when, like three weeks ago, when the talking heads on television were somberly declaring, we could see upwards of two million deaths in these United States? Yeah, that’s not going to happen. That’s okay though, they’ve been revising down for the better part of a month, and every time, although the numbers get less alarming, the baritone voices and the grave looks are still as gloomy and dismal.

Blow me over with a feather; the modelers got the models wrong. Once the dust settles and we begin to cross-reference average deaths from pneumonia, seasonal flu, and other ailments people die of, we will also likely notice that with the spike in Corona deaths, there has been a reported decline in deaths from the other maladies. I know, a stretch, but as I’ve been saying for the past few weeks, most of what I write nowadays is for posterity.

The problem with models is that human beings are the ones responsible for entering the data upon which the models are created. The models churn out their numbers not based on some supernatural knowledge or awareness we mere mortals are not privy to but based on random numbers, we mere mortals enter into them.

One small tweak here, one little tweak there, and you can scare an entire global population by pointing to the model and saying that both California and New York would be underwater from global warming by 2012 or some such. Yeah, that didn’t age well, but it doesn’t really matter since Al Gore is still an almost billionaire from parlaying his fear porn into a lucrative business.

Just a smidge of superficial research is enough to confirm that the only thing models are surprisingly consistent about is being horribly wrong. From melting glaciers to dying polar bears, to the effect of aids on the heterosexual population, to Ebola, SARS, homicides due to increased gun ownership, and presidential election models, they’ve all been wrong. When I say wrong, I don’t mean by a little, or by some minute percentage, I mean wrong like in predicting a 99% chance that Madame Rodham Clinton would be the captain helming the ship as we attempt to navigate these troublesome times.

No matter how many times the models get it wrong, we are reminded that there is a chance that this time they might get it right. When they don’t, they brush off the failure only to reemerge anew every time some new thing begins to get a little traction.

I don’t need models to tell me that if people don’t work, they don’t eat. I don’t need models to tell me that even with the countless social nets we have in place, if half the population is forced to stay home, stress eating and binge-watching television for months on end, at some point, the nets will snap.

You have modelers spewing out numbers like eighteen months, twenty-four months, or, and I like this one the most until a vaccine is discovered. That’s what they were saying about aids back in the day, and if you don’t believe me, look it up.

The good news is that there won’t be a million or two million dead in this country from this virus. The models got it wrong again. The bad news is that no one has come up with a model of how many people will starve to death if we don’t get this economy up and running soon. The numbers would be sobering, and it would be a model I would be tempted to believe. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.