Disease models are essentially useless. Their primary value is to issue scary forecasts, that are wrong. Even when correct, they do not provide actionable value.
“In August, we estimated there could be 39,000 COVID-19 cases in September among school-aged kids in Utah. We were way off. The actual number was 9,957, well below our projection,” the Utah Department of Health said in a recent tweet.
Officials with the department acknowledged that public health modeling is “complex,” as it attempts to predict behavior based on past measures.
