to tell Toby Young that 50,000 / 5 million is 1%, not 0.1%

[chomalungma]

So Toby Young has fucked up his maths

Toby Young
@toadmeister
New study suggests more than five million Britons have had the coronavirus. Given that ~50,000 people have died from it, that means it has an IFR of

I see he's not corrected his maths.

But Dianne Abbot eh ?

Or does he mean out of the total population?

@WhatATimeToBeAlive

Or does he mean out of the total population?

He means the number of people who have died compared to the number of people who are supposed to have caught it.

I see 'That's 1% ' is trending on Twitter.

I see he's admitted his mistake

Toby Young
@toadmeister
That last tweet was wrong. Had been up till 6am doing Lockdown Sceptics and had a brain fart. If 5 million Brits have been infected and ~50,000 have died, that equals an IFR of 1%.

Funny how he was more than happy to lay into Diane Abbot when she made a mistake (even though on many interviews that day she had been fine)

I don’t think this is automatically a fault. A lot of people write 1% as 0.1%.

I must admit I haven’t read the story

@switswooo

I don’t think this is automatically a fault. A lot of people write 1% as 0.1%.

Well in that case a lot of people are wrong.

You can write 1% as 0.01

But not as 0.1% or even 0.1

don’t think this is automatically a fault. A lot of people write 1% as 0.1%

No they don’t!! Where do you get this from?

@switswooo

I don’t think this is automatically a fault. A lot of people write 1% as 0.1%.

Eh? Only people who have written the wrong number.

Look at him, he has to give an excuse for his crap maths. ‘Been up til 6am’. Remind us how you got into Oxford, Toby?

The thing is - he has now admitted that it's 10x times deadlier than the flu - if you look at the tweet he put out when he compared it to the flu.

Yet I doubt he will take it seriously given what he's just worked out - even though his original tweet likened it to the flu.

I don’t think this is automatically a fault. A lot of people write 1% as 0.1%.

Well if they do it is still absolutely wrong. As he has admitted. But it is very easy to make mistakes when counting zeros!

I wonder if his new realisation will change his perspective on it?

no lots of people don't write 0.1 same as 1% ha ha!! I'm rubbish at maths but even I know that is a significant difference in percentage terms.

He was 110% wrong.

So surely he should also correct his statement re seasonal flu too? If the stats don't correlate neither does the resulting statement. God people are so insufferably afraid of admitting they fucked up.

110% wrong! brilliant! or correct by Toby's reckoning ...

And curiously still no comment from him expressing concern at such a high percentage.

@switswooo

I don’t think this is automatically a fault. A lot of people write 1% as 0.1%.

And they'd all be wrong too!

You know people like Toby Young are pathological attention seekers who thrive on other people's indignation? So why give it to them? Its really not that important in the big scheme of things

@switswooo

I don’t think this is automatically a fault. A lot of people write 1% as 0.1%.

I hope not - means their maths is rubbish. 1% and 0.1% are totally different.

Toby Young's maths failure is not the worst thing he has ever done.