Coronavirus projections ‘were all wrong,’ New York State Governor Cuomo says

Yesterday, we told you about coronvirus model from Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College London that gathered a lot of attention in March. Back then, the team estimated that around 1% of infections of COVID-19 would ultimately result in 2.2 million deaths in the United States from coronavirus. The model later turned out to be wrong.

Now, New York state Governor Cuomo seems to have learned from failed projections from health experts. Responding to questions from reporters today about if the current reopening effort is working during the update on COVID-19 response, Governor Andrew Cuomo said it’s too early to say whether New York state’s regional reopening a week ago is stopping the spread of the deadly coronavirus. Governor Cuomo went on to say that he’s not going to guess when the rest of the state, including New York City, might start to reopen.

“Now, people can speculate, people can guess, I think next week, I think two weeks, I think a month,” Governor Cuomo said. “I’m out of that business, because we all failed at that business. All the early national experts, here’s my projection, here’s my projection model, they were all all wrong, they were all wrong.”

Unfortunately, these failed models were not only used in the state of New York, they were also used by federal government to set our health policy. For instance, the federal government used he University of Washington’s IMHE model. The IMHE model has served through most of the pandemic as the most trusted and widely cited projection. The model first estimated 93,531 deaths before it later revised to 81,766, then to 60,415. Unfortunately, the death toll in the U.S. now stands at over 98,000 according to the latest coronavirus tracking data.

In the end, As Dr. Anthony Fauci said, the model is as good as the underlying assumptions and data.

Governor Cuomo’s answer starts at 11:20 minutes in the video.

https://www.facebook.com/Nightline/videos/183363239605070/