As of yesterday, April 30, the reported number of deaths in the U.S. from the Wuhan coronavirus stood at just under 64,000. Of that total, just under 60,000 were reported in April.
Will the U.S. death count be lower in May? Probably. However, these days more than 2,000 Americans are dying of this virus per day, and we can expect something like that number of daily deaths to persist in the early part of May. Even if the death count drops to around 1,000 per day in the latter part of the month, it’s not unrealistic to expect 40,000 more deaths from the virus in May.
That would drive the total count to more than 100,000. And given the number of new cases reported in April, which is trending downward only slightly, we can expect thousands of more deaths in June.
Clearly, the IHME model in all of its iterations presented a picture that was too optimistic with regard to deaths.
To be sure, we can’t expect anything like perfection from those who are trying to model outcomes in this pandemic. However, it has been evident to the naked eye that the IHME model had become radically too optimistic. As Steve suggested in one of our Power Line shows, one could have done a better job than the modelers on the death count simply by using graph paper.
