Reply to post: Re: We Could, But Should We?

Re: We Could, But Should We?

David Spieglehalter and Anthony Masters published an article in the Guardian 'How good are we at predicting the pandemic?':

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/may/09/how-good-are-we-at-predicting-pandemic

"Perhaps the most famous piece of modelling came from Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College London in March 2020, credited with provoking the full national lockdown. Unfortunately, there are repeated claims they estimated 510,000 deaths in Great Britain over two years, but that was a projection under the implausible scenario that nothing was done about the virus. Their model was, if anything, rather optimistic. Even short of a full lockdown, they projected maximum deaths in Great Britain of fewer than 50,000 and the actual total has been far higher.

In July 2020, a “reasonable worst case scenario” predicted 85,000 UK Covid deaths up to 31 March 2021. This seemed pessimistic at the time but, in part due to the unforeseen “Kent” variant, the truth turned out to be rather worse than the “worst case”, with about 95,000 deaths."

Link to the 'reasonable worst case scenario numbers:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spi-m-o-uk-reasonable-worst-case-scenario-weekly-metrics-30-july-2020

Also on 15th March 2020:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/uk-coronavirus-crisis-to-last-until-spring-2021-and-could-see-79m-hospitalised

"

“For the public to hear that it could last for 12 months, people are going to be really upset about that and pretty worried about that”, said Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia.

“A year is entirely plausible. But that figure isn’t well appreciated or understood,” added Hunter, an expert in epidemiology.

“I think it will dip in the summer, towards the end of June, and come back in November, in the way that usual seasonal flu does. I think it will be around forever, but become less severe over time, as immunity builds up,” he added.

The admission that the virus will continue to cause problems for another year appears to undermine hopes that the arrival of warmer weather this summer would kill it.

"