COVID-19 Pandemic Modelling Forecasts vs. The Actual Situation in Canada

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 in January 2020, people have paid close attention to the trend of the epidemic and the development of vaccines. At the beginning of the outbreak of the epidemic in Toronto, the Ontario government announced that all schools would replace courses in-person with online courses. At that time, I stayed in Toronto and took my online courses at my rental houses every day. After accomplishing the last semester of my sophomore year and remote internship, I went back to my country at the end of August 2020. Now, my life is not different from my life in Toronto at the time of the outbreak of COVID-19, staying in the room and taking online courses is my daily task. It seems that the shadow of the epidemic still hangs over me. 

After I return to my country, I still concern about the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, and I want to figure out whether there exists an apparent difference between Canada's COVID-19 pandemic modelling forecasts and reality or not. In the middle of the outbreak of COVID-19, epidemiologists at the Public Health Agency of Canada used a mathematical growth model to build pandemic modelling to make projections. Recently, the federal government showed epidemiological updates including the short-term and long-term predictions of the infection trajectory in Canada. Besides, CTVNews.ca pulled relative data to compare the modelling forecasts and reality. According to the actual situation and forecasts of the epidemic from September to November, the results of modelling predictions were much worse than the reality. For instance, the pandemic modelling predicts the number of infected people would exceed 5000 per day by November, however, the official recorded results demonstrate that the average number of infected people was around 3000 in seven days in early November. It reflects the results of modelling predictions and the reality may have some differences to some extent. Additionally, the Public Health Agency of Canada made two projections for the epidemic situations in December 2020, one is the number of infected people would increase by 20 per cent, the other one is the number of infected people would decrease by 25 per cent. Nevertheless, the number of infected people in December 2020 did not increase or decrease in the way projected by the two predictions, which reveals the actual situation is not consistent with the results of modelling forecasts at all in some cases. Thus, there are obvious differences between COVID-19 pandemic modelling forecasts' results and reality in Canada.

Does it mean the statistical modelling is useless and unreliable? No. The most significant reason for the large differences between modelling predictions and reality is that human behaviour, as a vital factor that affects modelling result, is unforeseeable and unknown. The influence of human behaviour is more severe for making long-term projections compared to short-term projections by using pandemic modelling. Therefore, accurately predicting the epidemic condition is more complicated than we think. Although the modelling forecasts might not be precise, the prediction results are still useful for reference. 



Reference:

Forani, J. (2020, December 09). How Canada's COVID-19 pandemic modelling forecasts compare to reality. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/how-canada-s-covid-19-pandemic-modelling-forecasts-compare-to-reality-1.5222193.

Lost jobs: Unemployment rate in WISCONSIN increases for first time since APRIL nearing 6 percent. (2020, November 22). Retrieved March 29, 2021, from http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/lost-jobs-unemployment-rate-wisconsin-increases-first-time-since-april-nearing-6-percent/