COVID modelling update

Time to revisit our old friends at the Ontario Science Table, who have just published the results of their latest attempt at modelling the course of the pandemic. Throughout this ordeal, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has insisted that he is "following the science", but the Science Table has not always made that easy. Regardless of how much work has gone into the models behind the scenes, politicians and the media have tended to jump on the worst case scenarios, which are generally just extrapolations. When those scenarios don't materialize -- which is, of course, the probable outcome -- public faith in both politicians and scientists gets eroded just a bit further. 

With that in mind, let's look at the slide deck the Science Table published on Tuesday. Clearly,  things are going much better than the scientists expected earlier in the fourth wave of COVID.  After Ontario relaxed many of its restrictions in mid-July, there were fears that the case count would soar, with the return to in-class schooling in September set to add to the toll. The worst case scenario was that cases, which had fallen to around 200 per day before the reopening, would soar to as many as 4000 per day by October.

There was certainly an uptick through August, with the daily case count seemingly heading north of 1000 at one point, but then the numbers stabilized and started to decline. For the past two days the number has been below 500. The Science Table acknowledges this, but in the most unenthusiastic way imaginable. Its first "key finding' begins thus: "New cases, hospitalizations and ICU admissions are not increasing".  You would think that was good news, but the scientists seem to want to play it down, calling the situation "fragile".  They attribute the fall in cases to rising vaccination rates and Ontario's decision to keep some of its public health measures in place.  Given that both of these factors were evident a couple of months ago, this rather begs the question of why the earlier projections were so much gloomier. 

In any case, the "fragility" of the situation leads the scientists to warn that the range of possible outcomes as the colder weather arrives is very wide, albeit starting from a much lower base than seemed likely earlier in the fourth wave. It's interesting to look at the graphics for cases and ICU admissions. Some smart person has chosen to print the worst case lines much thinner than those for the base case and more optimistic scenarios. Given the tendency of the media and politicians to glom onto the worst case at every opportunity, it seems unlikely that this is accidental.

These projections emerge as something interesting seems to be happening with the pandemic across the globe.  The WHO just reported that cases fell by 10 percent over the past week. Even jurisdictions that have handled this whole nightmare badly -- Boris Johnson's UK, Ron DeathSentence's Florida -- are seeing lower case counts than the gloomsters had predicted.  Some scientists in the UK are suggesting that the virus is set to run out of ways to spin off ever more dangerous mutations, and will soon be no more lethal than the common cold. That may be a premature call and it won't make forecasting any easier, but it might mean (please!) that the rest of us don't have to pay quite so much attention.