Pandemic modelling is a dialogue with nature, not a monologue
by Alberto Boretti
International Journal of Global Warming (IJGW), Vol. 21, No. 4, 2020

Abstract: As soon as more data became available, the assumptions of the simulations that drove the world to lockdown appear to be incorrect. In particular, the fatality rate is much less than what was assumed in the simulations, the same as the parameters affecting the duration of the outbreak. The number of people that do not get infected even if challenged by the virus, and those who are asymptomatic and mild, is much larger than what was thought. The infection fatality rate is evaluated at somewhere in the range of 0.12% and 0.2%, exceptionally a long way from the 0.9% presumed in the models. The peak daily mortality rate is also much less than the model results, roughly of a factor of 20, and also achieved much quicker, typically in less than one month after the outbreak, with similar trends in countries with or without complete lockdown and harsh distancing measures. This calls for a much different approach, where predictions by models are continuously updated through validation versus the continuously evolving experimental evidence. More importantly, policy measures based on past results proven to be wrong should be similarly revised.

Online publication date: Wed, 02-Sep-2020

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