"I have read and reread that quote a dozen times. I have tried to determine if maybe the president meant 'the end of April.' instead of 'the end of the pandemic.'" Bob Dietz (April 21, 2020)
"For the last 10 days or so, the front-and-center model has been the University of Washington's version. Evidently the White House has adopted this particular model as its de rigeuer projection. The model is convenient in two respects. It artificially truncates the 'end of the pandemic' to August 4th, and it projects the lowest number of deaths up until August 4th." Bob Dietz (April 21, 2020)
"Our forecast is now 74,000 deaths. That is our best estimate." Dr. Chris Murray, director of IHME, whose model was promulgated by the White House (April 28, 2020).
"The model estimate is pure hokum." "That number is laughable. How stupid do they think we are?" Bob Dietz (April 28, 2020)
"This is a great success story." Jared Kushner (April 29, 2020)
"The prophecies from the Trump administration have failed. In fact, they have failed miserably. Make no mistake, however, there will be additional far fetched prophecies to come. And no shortage of believers." Bob Dietz (May 2, 2020)
"A toll that sprinted past 9/11, climbed above Vietnam deaths, and is now projected by that IHME model to reach 134,000 by August 4th, which is an arbitrary date that serves no real purpose other than to create an illusory end point." Bob Dietz (May 7, 2020)
"We'll be at 100,000, 110,000 -- the lower level of what was projected if we did the shutdown." President Donald Trump (May 8, 2020)
"137,000 deaths by August 4th," IHME model (May 9, 2020).
"In recent days, the media has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a 'second wave' of coronavirus infections. Such panic is overblown." Vice-President Pence (June 16, 2020)
Since the subject matter here involves avoidable American deaths, I'll keep the snarkiness to a minimum. The IHME was undoubtedly a convenient front man for the White House because the IHME team of experts had the lowest death projections. The IHME originally predicted 60,000 deaths by August 4. We are a day or two short of 160,000. That's quite a discrepancy. It's hard to be as wrong about something as the IHME and the White House with these projections. The IHME, I suspect, got themselves into a quid pro quo quicksand with the White House. Not unlike what happened to Deborah Birx. Dr. Birx appears, at least, to have somewhat rediscovered her professional voice recently after a couple of months serving as a ventriloquist's dummy.
So how the hell did a professional sports gambler, namely me, out-predict the IHME every step of a six month pandemic? Well, it was not rocket science.
I followed some international scientists, especially the head of South Korea's infectious disease institute, who gave some great interviews. I leaned heavily on reading what people didn't want to know. Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, has been a painful voice of reason since the beginning of the pandemic. When the IHME was saying 60,000, Dr. Osterholm was more or less rolling his eyes. It took way too long for the American media to plug into Dr. Osterholm, probably because nobody wanted to hear what he had to say. Osterholm has been too restrained and professional to directly suggest that the IHME has had its head up President Trump's ass the entire time, so I'll say it for him.
Those August 4 "end dates" for the pandemic were always patent nonsense. Why insert an arbitrary figure as a projection point? It misleads the public unless, with every mention of the August 4 projection, you always explicitly say that the pandemic will not have ended on that date and many more deaths will occur afterwards. If IHME didn't, as a matter of protocol, include these kinds of warnings, then it was guilty as hell of misleading American civilians.
I noted in an earlier blog entry that Dr. Chris Murray, who made multiple CNN appearances as the face of IHME, looked and sounded like a used car salesman who just figured out that he'd been trying to sell a car to another used car salesman. Murray knew the IHME projections were going to be wrong, and he knew that everyone would eventually know it, too.
Both the IHME and Dr. Birx found themselves in the same bind. They plugged in their data and assumed way too much about American behavior. Basically, for all of their data, they surrendered their responsibilities to models not anchored in the real world that is the United States.
Both the IHME and Dr. Birx:
1) Assumed American civilians would, when confronted with mitigation recommendations, behave as scientists would behave.
2) Failed miserably to take into account that both their boss and the most watched American news network would routinely downplay the need to follow their recommendations. It's fine to have data, but if you don't take the two things I just mentioned (boss and network) and weight them heavily in your analyses, you are very naive as a public health professional. You are missing huge, key influences on American behavior. You are naive to the point of being a danger to the American public.
3) They refused to loudly, publicly push back on the president and the news network. This was nothing less than a dereliction of public duty as health professionals.
Don't believe what you prefer to believe. It's a gambling truism that I've found very useful vis-a-vis life in general. The IHME and the Coronavirus Task Force have both fallen hard for believing what they prefer to believe. Did President Trump and Jared Kushner buy into these projections? I'm not sure it matters much. President Trump and his circle used these horrendously incorrect predictions as tools, as fog machines, as opium for the people.
I leave you on this August 4 with two quotes from an earlier blog entry (Bob Dietz. April 21):
"First of all, kiss the 60K fatality projections of this model goodbye, as they were based on stay-at-home and social distancing through the (artificial) August 4th end date. The super-capitalists have jumped the gun and will re-open businesses in some of the worst possible states in a few days. Second, that 60K number did not account for Easter transmission surges, protest transmission bursts, and the overall inanity of a good chunk of the American public."
"That 60K figure was a mirage. And our reality is a long, arduous trek."
Bob Dietz
August 4, 2020
