THE SUICIDE OF EXPERTISE (CONT’D): The Models Were Wildly Wrong about Reopening Too.
More than 8 weeks have passed since the publication of the ICL team’s warnings against reopening, meaning we can now see how their model performed.
As with other examples of ICL COVID modeling, their attempt to predict the effects of a US reopening can only be described as an embarrassing scientific failure.
The image below shows the three modeled scenarios from May, as depicted in the ICL report for the five states under consideration. Note that even under the “constant mobility” scenario of remaining under lockdown, their model predicted an increase in COVID deaths for every state except New York, which had already peaked. Under the reopening scenarios where mobility increased 20% and 40% respectively from its lockdown state, all five states were predicted to surge into apocalyptic territory by the middle of July. Under the 40% scenario, this even entailed upper boundaries of more than 4,000 deaths per day (the bands represent the 95% confidence interval). Massachusetts and New York, two of the hardest-hit states from the first wave back in March and April, would easily match or exceed their previous COVID-19 daily death records.
To see how these predictions held up, I indicated the daily death totals for each state for July 20th with a small red dot on the graphs above. As you can see, the actual totals are below the ICL model’s predictions in every scenario. In Massachusetts, the current daily death totals are even falling below the lower boundary of the ICL model’s projections for both its 20% and 40% mobility increase scenarios.
Coronavirus cases and deaths have spiked in two of the modeled states, Florida and California. As of the week of July 20th, both are averaging between roughly 100 and 150 deaths per day. Yet even with this “second wave” spike, Florida and California are only showing about one-tenth of the projected deaths that the Imperial College modelers predicted for this time back in May.
In New York, Washington, and Massachusetts, daily death counts have dropped to the low double-digits and remain a tiny fraction of the ICL predictions for mid-July.
Nobody’s perfect, but come on.