Weren't their early numbers showing 2M deaths in the US?
Imperial College of London was the one showing 2M.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdfBear in mind that was their "do nothing" worst-case scenario. And by "do nothing", I mean literally NOTHING:
In the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour
They even claim it is unlikely, largely because we know that as the cases and deaths mounted people absolutely would change their behavior. As you even point out with the link to the article about of Sweden, where even despite official lockdowns the Swedes were voluntarily complying with the request to change their behavior.
While everyone was crowing about how wrong they were, their best-case scenario was much lower (the PDF suggests a factor of 8) if I remember correctly. That best-case was based on 5 mitigation strategies:
- CI: Case isolation in the home -- Symptomatic cases stay at home for 7 days, reducing nonhousehold contacts by 75% for this period. Household contacts remain unchanged. Assume 70% of household comply with the policy.
- HQ: Voluntary home quarantine -- Following identification of a symptomatic case in the household, all household members remain at home for 14 days. Household contact rates double during this quarantine period, contacts in the community reduce by 75%. Assume 50% of household comply with the policy.
- SDO: Social distancing of those over 70 years of age -- Reduce contacts by 50% in workplaces, increase household contacts by 25% and reduce other contacts by 75%. Assume 75% compliance with policy.
- SD: Social distancing of entire population -- All households reduce contact outside household, school or workplace by 75%. School contact rates unchanged, workplace contact rates reduced by 25%. Household contact rates assumed to increase by 25%.
- PC: Closure of schools and universities -- Closure of all schools, 25% of universities remain open. Household contact rates for student families increase by 50% during closure. Contacts in the community increase by 25% during closure.
Hmm, seems like we've actually done a pretty good job of implementing ALL of the strategies that they identify. And we started wearing masks too. And they didn't even assume 100% compliance, because that would of course be unrealistic.
So I don't know why everyone points out how "wrong" they were. If you look at their model for the Great Britain, their model claims that if you use all 4 mitigation strategies (PC+CI+HQ+SD), and an R0 of 2.4, their total deaths over two years would finish around 39,000*. Their deaths as of today? 42,000.
So the UK model's best case is better than they've done so far. Yet this model is still held up as evidence of fear-mongering because we did the things they told us would keep the number of deaths from reaching the levels they prophesied as "do nothing".
* Note: that's based on certain trigger policies of when you do/don't implement the strategies and when you come off them. I chose worst-case.