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Interesting that the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has reduced its estimate of the total number of deaths in the UK by early August from 66,000 to 37,494 (not sure why the figure is quoted to such a high level of accuracy), though the variance is wide, between 26,000 and 62,500: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdomWhy do the figures vary so much? The reason is the quality of the data available - and Covid-19 is a new virus and isn't well understood yet.There's an interesting article on epidemiological modelling today at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/modelling-pandemic-politicians-decisions-science, in which the author argues that the problem is not the modelling as such but the government's inability to deal with situations where the technical advice provided isn't consistent: how are the politicians dealing with such situations? The answer is, because they mostly have no scientific or medical backgrounds, not at all well.Traditionally, this difficulty exists in the Civil Service: there is still a division between the administrators, who do the deciding, and the technical support staff (scientific, medical, statistical, economic etc), who just advise. I remember seeing this starkly in the Department of Health when I was involved in highly technical expenditure forecasting: the under secretary leading the work had a degree in medieval French (luckily, he was very clever and adapted well). And when my line manager was advising another under sec he tried to explain some phenomenon or other by invoking negative feedback. The man just laughed at the absurdity of this incomprehensible notion.Things have improved to some extent since then, but the divide remains, and makes policy making difficult especially in a crisis like this one.

Richard Carter ● 2250d