Coronavirus: IHME Model by University of Washington Can’t Be Trusted

I have precisely zero envy for anyone trying to predict where the COVID-19 pandemic is headed. There’s a ton we don’t know about how quickly the virus spreads under different conditions, what new treatments will appear, how policy will change in the future, and how well the public will practice social distancing during the summer regardless of policy. Even the world’s top epidemiologists cannot be expected to give us more than educated guesses that are based on reasonable, clearly explained assumptions — and that improve as new information comes in.

Some of those guesses can be quite valuable even as they’re quite uncertain. Given the massive funding behind it and the faith placed in it by the now-moribund White House Coronavirus Task Force, I once hoped that the COVID-19 model from the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) would prove to be one such valuable tool. But those hopes have been dashed: The model simply doesn’t work, and the folks behind it are still futzing with its fundamental workings as the pandemic enters its least predictable phase.

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Robert VerBruggen

Robert VerBruggen is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

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I have precisely zero envy for anyone trying to predict where the COVID-19 pandemic is headed. There’s a ton we don’t know about how quickly the virus spreads under different conditions, what new treatments will appear, how policy will change in the future, and how well the public will practice social distancing during the summer regardless of policy. Even the world’s top epidemiologists cannot be expected to give us more than educated guesses that are based on reasonable, clearly explained assumptions — and that improve as new information comes in.

Some of those guesses can be quite valuable even as they’re quite uncertain. Given the massive funding behind it and the faith placed in it by the now-moribund White House Coronavirus Task Force, I once hoped that the COVID-19 model from the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) would prove to be one such valuable tool. But those hopes have been dashed: The model simply doesn’t work, and the folks behind it are still futzing with its fundamental workings as the pandemic enters its least predictable phase.