I wanted to add a bit more about that IHME study – some more perspective on what it is and isn’t telling us. Before I do, a quick point. Last night an exasperated TPM Reader FT wrote in saying in so many words all the debate about models is morbid. What are we accomplishing by debating technicalities about why a horrid number of Americans are going to die versus twice a horrid number? And if we’re saying it’s so bad in advance what incentive does anyone have to social distance?
First, this is all overwhelming stuff. I’m sitting here this morning with the news that the number of people who die in this calamity is likely to be counted in the hundreds of thousands. I’m simultaneously numbed and overwhelmed by it. We all have to pace ourselves. And we all have to be gentle with ourselves and others around us. One of those things is taking some breaks from the news when we need to.
The Senate majority leader tried to give him an out.
It’s hardly surprising that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would contort himself into a pretzel to offer President Trump some sort of excuse — especially one dripping in Trump’s favorite flavor of partisanship — for the administration’s botched handling of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. But the befuddling bit is Trump didn’t bite.
As I explained to TPM Reader JG, who wrote the email below, when I’m writing about or describing something where my knowledge is very limited I try to keep it vague and refer people to the source. I’m sharing JG’s follow up on the “rosy scenarios” post because he gets into a, probably the key element about why these models have a major uncertainty contained in them.
A comment on your “Rosy Scenarios” post. I read Carl Berstrom’s Twitter threads about the IHME study and think you’re understating just how rosy the estimates from that study are. Outside of the assumptions on the biological side – that there is “Wuhan-style” social distancing for the duration of the epidemic – the main problem is that the study is an exercise in mathematical curve fitting, not biology.
Yesterday I shared with you that modeling site from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which is based at the University of Washington School of Medicine. This is the one that models the course and intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic both nationwide and in individual states. It’s clearly getting a lot of attention. Apparently it’s now being cited by the White House and just moments ago I was watching a CNN interview with Dr. Chris Murray, one of the researchers behind the modeling.
Yesterday I corresponded with a TPM Reader who referenced the theory that the cataclysmic economic data we are now seeing predicted on quarterly GDP, unemployment and more are categorically different because they are being created deliberately to accomplish a specific purpose. We don’t have a bad economy. We deliberately shut the economy down to save lives and prevent a specific sort of economic and societal chaos caused by mass mortality. There are significant ways in which this is true. But I wanted to explain key ways it is not.
We have intentionally placed what amounts to a pause on broad portions of the national economy. It’s not a mystery why we’re heading into a period of mass unemployment. We specifically told tens of millions of people not to go to work. But this is something like placing a pause on blood flow through your body. When the blood stops flowing it’s not just a matter of starting it up again. When the blood stops flowing a lot of things start to break and they don’t unbreak when the flow resumes. The analogy between the physical body and economic life is a strong one.
While President Trump was moved on Sunday by the grim data experts showed him on death projections sans tight social distancing measures, there was another set of numbers that reportedly pushed Trump to abandon his Easter pipe dream.
Here’s new data just released from the COVID-19 Tracking Project.
First, here’s the latest data for daily new cases and fatalities across the United States.
A new estimate from economists at the St. Louis Fed project total COVID-19 Crisis employment reductions at 47 million people. That would translate into a 32.1% unemployment rate. To give some perspective that is significantly higher than the peak unemployment during the Great Depression (24.9%) and wildly higher than anything seen during the Great Recession (10%).
Here is an interesting data source projecting the scope and duration of the epidemic across the United States and within each individual state. I cannot speak to the accuracy or methodology. I am pointing it out to you because it’s the work of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research center attached to the University of Washington School of Medicine. In other words, these are credentialed, serious people. Whether they’re correct I cannot say. And I pass it on on that basis.