Coronavirus Pandemic: Projection Models Proving Unreliable | National Review
The model on which the government is relying is simply unreliable. It is not that social distancing has changed the equation; it is that the equation s fundamental assumptions are so dead wrong, they cannot remain reasonably stable for just 72 hours.
And mind you, when we observe that the government is relying on the models, we mean reliance for the purpose of making policy, including the policy of completely closing down American businesses and attempting to confine people to their homes because, it is said, no lesser measures will do. That seems worth stressing in light of this morning s announcement that unemployment claims spiked another 6.6 million (now well over 16 million in just the past couple of weeks), to say nothing of the fact that, while the nation reels, the Senate has now chosen to go on recess, having failed, thanks to Democratic obstinacy, to enact legislation to give more relief to our fast-shrinking small-business sector.
As I detailed in the last post, the revised April 5 model was grossly wrong even in predicting conditions that would obtain on April 5 itself. It had predicted that on that day, New York, the epicenter of the crisis, would need about 24,000 hospital beds, including 6,000 ICU beds. In fact, the model was off by a third New York had 16,479 hospitalized COVID patients, 4,376 that were in ICU.
It seems the government might have been wrong.