Hat tip to the Huskies: Washington did better than U Mich
NO POLITICS and STAY HOME AND STAY SAFE until further notice:
With our upcoming home and home series, I thought it would be good to tip the hat to the researchers at Washington. They seemed to have done a better job than our own U of M team looking at things in our home state.
Two weeks ago, the federal government, relying on a U Wash model, predicted a peak for COVID cases in Michigan in early April. The state government, relying on the University of Michigan, predicted a peak in late April or early May.
Both models assumed social distancing would be in place over the last couple weeks. Nothing changed.
While something crazy might happen, it appears the Washington modelers were MUCH MUCH more accurate.
https://infogram.com/michigan-covid-19-data-dashboard-1hdw2jr0gpyd6l0
Cases in Michigan have been on the decline since early April. Good job on the modeling, Huskies.
We should be happy the more severe predictions from UM didn't hold up. That would have been worse for all of us. Let's hope many of the other more dire predictions don't hold up as well.
Let's try to remember this virus is brand new and we are learning more everyday. For example, there have been numerous tests uncovering important data about the virus on an almost daily basis.
From the above, we can tell that even the experts are working to figure this out and many will get it wrong despite their best efforts. Let's ALL be open to the new data we are learning and not dig in our heels to our original view of things based on politics or rigidity. Let the evolving science dictate, not feeling.
Once again, NO POLITICS and STAY HOME AND STAY SAFE until further notice.
The UW model has been just as wrong as every other model.
It assumed full social distancing measures and projected almost every state to far exceed their resources. Of course no states actually came close to doing so (areas in certain states - Michigan, New York - were certainly strained). This is with nowhere near the level of lockdown assumed in the models.
Predicting the peak should be easy - it should be 10-17 days after you implement shelter-in-place.
You bring up a good point, the UW model assumes much stricter social distancing than actually happened. It assumes each state would take strong measures. However, that didnt happen and many states still started to level off. Overall, they revised the projections downward too.
They may change it again. Lots of stuff to be figured out.
April 20th, 2020 at 10:35 PM ^
Is the point that COVID-19 isn't as dangerous as some thought? If so, yay, but that doesn't mean we can afford to change the playbook at this point, there are still too many unknowns at this points, and too great of a risk of a second wave to relieve restrictions.
There's a saying in epidemiology. All models are wrong, some are useful.
Did you consider it "changing the playbook" when Governor Whitmer decided to curtail rights and economic activity with her last order despite Michiganders flattening the curve with their behavior under the prior, less strict order?