You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more
7. "We have to get away from communicating about the IFR." To have the proper "shock effect" on the public, they will talk instead about overwhelmed hospitals. Emphasise that many people will be denied care and forced to suffocate at home. "Suffocation is an instinctive fear."pic.twitter.com/XkOP0Nsb6s
8. That's from p. 13, for those keeping score at home. Heading out for a run, this thread tbc. You can download the archive yourself and study it here:https://twitter.com/aya_velazquez/status/1370776733541134336 …
9. (All of the preceding from the text of the secret internal-use-only modelling study itself, which is pp. 1-17 in the doc dump.)
10. April 16 2020: Kerber (interior ministry agent) asks the modellers if he can disclose their names to media & politicians The model authors all reply yes. Names redacted, but an email sig shows one of these modellers is at Uni Nottingham China & lists his recent publications.pic.twitter.com/OWC5I2exW3
(11. OK now i really am going running. Above from pp. 81-82, 84.)
12. Now we jump back to late-ish March 2020, and the emails of the modellers and Interior Ministry bureaucrats, as they build the panic study. Somebody pulls estimates out of their ass for how measures will impact R. School closures will reduce it to 1,6; lockdown, to 1,2 ...pic.twitter.com/ZNFdllk62T
13. ... mass testing will push it down to 0,8; and after 20 April, when Germany begins to reopen, it will go back up to 0,95. They expected cases to turn around on 6 April. Obviously they were totally wrong about all of this.
14. As the "scientists" constructed their model they were informed by an Assistant Professor of International Studies in China, who passed them "secret" information apparently about the Chinese response. From p. 99:pic.twitter.com/EIYRAdzEml
15. Moar, from p. 100. The word "China" is redacted here, but it's obvious what they're talking about The documentation included "quantitative studies" and supplementary materials from "trustworthy NGOs." Some pieces were furnished in ready-made (German? English?) translations.pic.twitter.com/Myjk3nRayP
16. The informant passing on the modelling materials is the same professor from the University of Nottingham in China we encountered above.pic.twitter.com/b4vpQy4sQs
17. The "new publications" he lists in his email sig (screenshot upthread) are all by Maximilian Mayer & include China-boosting pieces like this one, which asks "whether the Chinese approach ... contributes to a peaceful reconstruction of global order"https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/94/6/1217/5162435?redirectedFrom=fulltext …
18. All this pro-lockdown data straight from mainland China and these mysterious "trustworthy NGOs" was forwarded within an hour to the head of the RKI (German CDC) an RKI statistician named Matthias an der Heiden. p. 99:pic.twitter.com/T6bAuxwrYb
19. The China informant had "argued very consistently for a Containment strategy, by analogy with the strategy in [China]" and supplied him with these relevant documents. "I think we should look these over and check that the RKI strategy agrees with them."pic.twitter.com/lxIiClPM4s
20. "Particularly the test strategy, according to [redacted] is of enormous importance."
21. It occurs to someone that their crazy high IFR estimates are baseless. A modeller shrugs & says, we need to make the arguments that will achieve our goals and pressure people to action. He mentions the "precautionary principle". "Better worse than too good."pic.twitter.com/Twy4Gsx486
22. On p. 107 they're talking about testing strategies again. Kerber, the bureaucrat who has arranged the whole study, wants to know if RKI-devised testing scheme "is similar to the practice in [redacted]" – presumably, China.pic.twitter.com/AcmMHrwKVa
23. Kerber hopes for a "communications strategy" that will build a sense of communal investment in the pandemic response in Germany. He wants to create an "Apollo-13" atmosphere, which I guess means something like determined optimism in the face of crisis.pic.twitter.com/PImjN0J9TY
24. The RKI modellers ask their informant in China, Maximilian Mayer (see upthread) about how contact tracing works in Asia Mayer responds: The RKI has already sent somebody to China, apparently to study and mimic their contact-tracing operation. They shld get in touch with him.pic.twitter.com/WuNogIlVD6
25. Just pausing to note that mass containment was not just inspired by Chinese example. It is a set of policies directly copied from China, by German observers and intermediaries in Chinese institutions, who supply the "modellers" all kinds of data and instructions. Wat mean.
26. And I mean, just ... how improbable is this Maximilian Mayer figure anyway. He's a junior prof at some Chinese Uni suddenly put in touch with the highest reaches of German public health bureaucracy. https://www.cassis.uni-bonn.de/de/ueber-cassis/prof.-maximilian-mayer …
27. "We suggest the motto 'Collectively Distanced'", Mayer writes. Who is this "we" and why is anybody talking to this nobody and how does he have access to "secret" Chinese pandemic data all ready-translated for RKI consumption and why does his name get redacted.pic.twitter.com/L8qoqLhqdc
28. On p. 186, one of these guys calls the Imperial College model the "gold standard of Covid-19 modelling". Their results should inform German model too.pic.twitter.com/hwKvnsyZKV
29. Quick timeline: 16 March: Imperial college model published. 19 March: The German Ministry of the Interior, through Kerber, convenes these idiots so Germany can have a model too.
30. Lmao that email in n. 28 above was also sent by Mayer, our China informant Germany, he says, needs to consider Asian countries w/ SARS experience, who have opted for containment, as an alternative to mitigation/herd-immunity, which was plan in western countries like Germanypic.twitter.com/N37ImYR9rB
31. We're back to 20 March and some of our "experts" are still joining the pseudoscience modelling panel and introducing themselves. This guy says his fundamental area of responsibility is the problem of [instilling] "fear and willingness to follow in the population"pic.twitter.com/o6Lu8w0GBO
32. That from p. 189. A final hilarious bit at the very end, in the mail from 19 March where Kerber announces the project to everyone "We don't know how long the networks will be reliably functioning," he says, and asks everyone to provide personal emails and telephone numbers.pic.twitter.com/nkNVthhaC3
33: Corona: It takes down your professional email but leaves the phones and personal email accounts intact. What a strange disease. That's it for now. Over half the pages are completely redacted. I've skipped a lot of the stuff about economic impact, may go through it later tho.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
