How accurate were early expert predictions on COVID-19, and how did they compare to the public?

[2greys]

Who made more accurate predictions about the course of the COVID-19 pandemic – experts or the public? A study from the University of Cambridge has found that experts such as epidemiologists and statisticians made far more accurate predictions than the public, but both groups substantially underestimated the true extent of the pandemic.

Researchers from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication surveyed 140 UK experts and 2,086 UK laypersons in April 2020 and asked them to make four quantitative predictions about the impact of COVID-19 by the end of 2020. Participants were also asked to indicate confidence in their predictions by providing upper and lower bounds of where they were 75% sure that the true answer would fall - for example, a participant would say they were 75% sure that the total number of infections would be between 300,000 and 800,000.

cam.ac.uk/research/news/how...

PLoS ONE. Study Paper:

journals.plos.org/plosone/a...

[Patk1]

I do remember phe stating e would do well to keep weather under 20,000! Boris saying it would be over before Xmas 20! And the WHO as gd as being ignored by UK powers that be!.. but I'm a realist!! ..but that's another story