https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/in ... et-either/
fivethirtyeight discusses a forecast by 18 infectious disease experts in the U.S.
On March 16&17... the experts were asked to predict how many U.S. Covid-19 cases would confirmed by Sunday March 29.
The experts' consensus forecast was 19,000 cases: a threshold which was actually crossed on March 20; 9 days earlier than expected.
Today-- a week before March 29-- there are 35,213 cases.
Only 3 or 4 of the experts' "high end" guesses haven't already been exceeded.
Only 2 of the experts' "best guesses" haven't already-been exceeded.
Those 2 experts guesses (50,000 by March 29 and 75,000 by March 29)-- would both represent a drastic downturn in the current expansion-rate of new confirmed cases.
Two major caveats to this data-- are
1. if the daily number of confirmed cases-- actually tracks an expansion of the number of Tests being conducted/ rather than the number of people actually becoming infected. (more people tested = more positive tests).
2. the comments section at fivethirtyeight is so amazed at the experts' low guesses-- that some are questioning whether fivethirtyeight interpreted the survey wrong-- and these were the experts predictions for today (sunday) rather than 3/29 (next sunday).
If there's NOT something like-that skewing the data-- then March 29's actual number of confirmed cases will be in a vicinity which the experts previously-predicted single-digit odds of occurring.... <5% chance.
I would cite this survey-of-expert-opinions to rebut anyone who uses 20/20 hindsight to condemn their political opponents for failing to heed the warnings of scientific & medical experts. The experts themselves didn't predict the numbers we're currently seeing.
The 18 experts polled are affiliated with: Institute for Disease Modeling, University of Washington, New Mexico State University, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Graduate School of Public Health University of Pittsburgh, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of Georgia, University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins University, In-Q-Tel, Kaiser Permanente Washington, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, University of Massachusetts- Amherst, Imperial College, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Carnegie Mellon University, Northeastern University Fogarty International Center, NIH.