It has always assumed that lockdowns would be everywhere and would be observed.
Every new revision in the last 20 days has been a revision downward in death rate.
10 days ago, the 95% confidence interval was 100k-240k deaths with lockdowns observed.
2 days ago it was 45k-145k, with prediction of 81k.
Today is is 37k-137k, with prediction of 60k.
IHME has no incentive to downplay the severity, yet every time the update the model, they have to adjust it downward because reality had failed to keep up with the model.
Meanwhile, reporting of fatalities has actually gotten looser, with all deaths of tested-positive or presumed-positive individuals reported as covid deaths, regardless of cause or comorbidities (that became universal yesterday, and is why yesterday saw a big increase in deaths despite a huge dropoff in hospitalization over the last 6 days)
Yes, I agree with all of that - but you are misreading my point.
In the OP people are talking about 'the models'? Well, who's models exactly? What is the official one? And which ones are going to get widely communicated and have authority in the eyes of the public.
I am not indicating that some group of University researchers, somewhere in America are 'in cahoots' with Donald Trump's political team, for example.
IHME, for example, surely will just publish whatever they think, but this is not 'communication' and not at a national level. The plebes are not reading their data.
What information the government collects directly, the information they chose to highlight in press briefings, the information they want to be communicated in their talking points, how it is presented ... this is controlled and filtered.
The IHME model is, at least in America, the most widely reported model, and is reportedly being relied upon by Dr. Fauci and the Trump Administration for the bulk of their own forecasting.
I tend to read a lot of left-leaning and right-leaning social media, and IHME's model is the only one that I routinely find both camps talking about and linking to.
Admittedly, on the right, most of the pointing has been to mock or demean it, showing the apparent continual need to revise downward as some sort of evidence of malfeasance or bias -- but even so, the model's predictions are being reviewed regularly on both sides of the spectrum.
On the left, I've also seen people remark on this particular model -- usually holding it up as proof that covid is a serious, scary problem that the Trump Administration is being too casual about.
Each group seeing the model differently, and drawing different conclusions from it -- but people are, in fact, looking at this model and it's predictions regularly.
You can call people you don't like "the plebes", and dismiss them as rubes -- but doing so tells me more about you than it does about them.
It probably is working, but it also seems likely that locking everyone in their houses reduces spread -- so three weeks after lockdown, there are fewer sick people to find each day.
It actually is likely that the decrease in cases is more dramatic than the numbers show -- now that the acute pressure on the healthcare system in New York has abated, they're probably detecting a higher percentage of their cases.
(And on top of that, testing has begun increasing again -- we tested 127,000 people today, up from 107,000/day just 6 days ago.)
In case anybody is still looking at the case numbers (especially in NY) and wondering why they keep kinda not going down even though things look better, we are actually still increasing testing rates (despite what you may have heard)
As I said above, we tested 127,000 people yesterday.
It has always assumed that lockdowns would be everywhere and would be observed.
Every new revision in the last 20 days has been a revision downward in death rate.
10 days ago, the 95% confidence interval was 100k-240k deaths with lockdowns observed.
2 days ago it was 45k-145k, with prediction of 81k.
Today is is 37k-137k, with prediction of 60k.
IHME has no incentive to downplay the severity, yet every time the update the model, they have to adjust it downward because reality had failed to keep up with the model.
Meanwhile, reporting of fatalities has actually gotten looser, with all deaths of tested-positive or presumed-positive individuals reported as covid deaths, regardless of cause or comorbidities (that became universal yesterday, and is why yesterday saw a big increase in deaths despite a huge dropoff in hospitalization over the last 6 days)