How many Americans will die from COVID-19? A biodefense expert explains how to understand the models ForbesFrontlines
If you wanted to make a model to predict how many deaths might occur from a new influenza pandemic, you would start with a known pandemic like the 1918 influenza pandemic or a more recent one. You would input the percent of individuals who died in that pandemic and extrapolate to a similar percentage of individuals in the world today.
This is just a “back of the napkin” calculation and doesn’t even approach the sophisticated calculations my epidemiologic modeling colleagues develop. However, as you can see, a model would start with certain facts, but then it would weave in layers of assumptions on top of those facts. The major problem for current models is the lack of testing. To calculate the percent of infected individuals who have died so far, you would need both the number of deaths from COVID-19 and the total number of infected people. Because we do not have comprehensive testing, we don’t really know the total number of infected people. Therefore, even death percentages are inexact. This presents a huge challenge for reliably predicting future deaths.
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