Experts have forecasted rising numbers of COVID-19 cases as hospitals such as Mount Sinai South Nassau scramble to respond. By Jeffrey BrainardScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.Statistical models of infectious disease are vital for understanding where the COVID-19 pandemic is headed.
But their predictive power can be limited by sparse data and rapidly changing circumstances.A useful complement to numerical models is forecasts made by experts using their informed judgment, says Tom McAndrew, a biostatistics postdoctoral researcher at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Each week since February, he and his faculty adviser, Nicholas Reich, have been surveying about 20 experts in public health and infectious