When California Gavin Newsom said March 20 that 25.5 million or 60% of the state population was going to be infected with coronavirus AKA SAR CoV-2 or Covid-19, no one knew where he got the data. Turns out that Newsom justified his statewide “shelter in place” order also on the same date. No one knew Newsom’s science adviser Calif. Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly was getting his modeling on the epidemiology of the corona virus from out-of-state. Relying on the Bill Gates-funded University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation [IHME], is like depending on pop statistician Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog to predict the Super Bowl, NBA Finals or World Series. President Donald Trump’s State Department immunologist Dr. Deborah Birx, who’s on the coronavirus Task Force, uses IHME to advise the president about possible outcomes.
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Newsom’s case echoes the foibles of relying on computer number-crunching to predict deaths in the any public health crisis, like the SARS CoV-2 epidemic. California has 11,027 total coronavirus cases with 239 deaths with a mortality rate of 2.16%. It’s one thing to make informed predictions, still another to be off by millions. No matter what the expected or not expected surge of SARS CoV-2 cases in California, only the smallest fraction of California’s 39.56 million population will get infected. Currently only .027% of the state’s population has been infected. When Newsom said 60% of the population would get infected, it made him look foolish or that he was deliberately exaggerating to justify his “shelter in place” order. Any attempt now to attribute the state’s slowing incidence of coronavirus to the governor’s “shelter in place” order is preposterous. Elected must get forecasts right.
Newsom lost credibility making such wild claims coming from number-crunching at Gates Foundation-funded IHME. Newsom’s adviser Ghaly has an obligation to get the governor the best estimates, not wild speculation by IHME or other think tanks. Saying now that he’s pleased with California’s response to “stay at home” orders doesn’t excuse the outrageous claims made by IHME about the SARS CoV-2 epidemic. When Nate Silver’s best guess blew up in his face on Election Night Nov. 4, 2016, he lost credibility when long-shot Donald Trump beat Hillary Rodham Clinton. Silver always makes excuses for why his models fail, the same as IHME. Birx needs to stop making Trump look like a fool parroting more IHME forecasts of 100,000 to 200,000 deaths when the total U.S. deaths from Covid-19 are 6,075.
With the outbreak due to level off in New York in mid-April and California in late-April, U.S. deaths from corona virus may not hit 20,000. IHME has no idea what will happen with the virus in the next few weeks, let alone years beyond. Spitting back IHME forecasts, the media has whipped U.S. citizens into a frenzy, fear-mongering with the worst-case scenarios to gain compliance on “shelter in place” orders. While there’s nothing wrong with distancing or “shelter in place” orders, there’s something very wrong with sowing panic in the public. New York Gov. Mario Cuomo cited IHME forecasts when he said New York’s hospitals would be flooded with cases. While some hospitals in Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx are crowded, many others are not near capacity, with more infected patients staying at home. Yet IHME forecasts had New York exceeding hospital-bed capacities.
Gov. Cuomo made some dire predictions of his own about California, again relying on forecasts from IHME. California’s cases haven’t seen the surge predicted by Cuomo or Newsom. Elected officials need reliable estimates to better inform federal officials on the need for hospital beds and life-saving medical supplies, including ventilators. IHME also forecasts nationwide shortages of ventilators when the need for Intensive Care Unit [ICU] beds has dropped to under 10%. With new treatments coming on board like hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin [Z-Pak], less coronavirus patients require hospitalization, let alone ICU beds. IHME grossly miscalculated its SARS CoV-2 cases, new cases, need for hospitalization and ICU beds, and, most importantly, new game-changer treatments like hydroxychloroquine and Z-Pak treatments. IHME’s predictions now look foolish.
Before Trump’s advisers make him look more alarmist, they need to temper forecasts with real limitations of computer-based modeling. It’s ironic that Trump gets slammed by the media for underestimating the epidemic then ripped for exaggerating possible 100,00 to 200,00 deaths. Trump’s own instincts showed more common sense than most of his advisers, including 80-year-old well-intentioned infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci. Fauci would have Trump quarantine the nation far longer than necessary, causing more collateral damage to U.S. citizens with lasting damage to the economy. Trump needs to remind his health care advisers that there’s more to the decision to restart the U.S. economy than forecasts by computers-based, number-crunching think tanks. Forecasting models often get things wrong when common sense gets things right.
