If you’re following the daily Coronavirus press briefings (and who isn’t???), you’ve surely noticed how drastically the projections have and continue to change about potential deaths in the United States. Numbers have been shockingly high, as much as 2 million, and yet continue to come down seemingly every day.

If you read this CNN article, an interview with University of Washington academic Dr Gregory Roth, the reasons become much more clear. The forecasting models are only as good as the input used to make the estimates. In this case, Roth and his team are assuming that social distancing rules in place today remain so until August. That seems pretty unlikely. So what can we take from this?

THE GOOD: social distancing is working, and if we keep it up, the outcome will only continue to improve

THE BAD: our current stay-at-home measures may be impossible to keep up for 4 more months

My simple analysis — pay attention to the updates and the projections, but don’t buy into them 110%.