‘Superforecasters’ Are Making Eerily Accurate Predictions About COVID-19. Our Leaders Could Learn From Their Approach

When Dr. Anthony Facui said in late May that there’s a “good chance” a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready by the end of this year, Steve Roth badly wanted to believe him. Roth, a 74-year-old New Yorker who endured fever, pneumonia and anxiety while fighting the virus, wants life to go back to normal as much as anyone. And he respects Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), ”an awful lot,” he says. But he just doesn’t think Facui’s timeline is realistic. Instead, he’s putting his proverbial money on mid 2021. “Like everybody else, I’d like to see a vaccine today,” says Roth. “But what’s the real world?” Roth is a semi-retired market researcher, not a biostatistician or epidemiologist, and hardly seems to be the kind of person you’d go to for insight into vaccine production. But in his spare time, Roth moonlights as a “superforecaster”— a member of a team of ordinary people who make surprisingly accurate predictions for the forecasting firm Good Judgement, Inc. In recent months, businesses, governments and other institutions have worked with superforecasters like Roth to help them understand how the COVID-19 outbreak might unfold. That a group of semi-professional forecasters would somehow have accurate insight into anything as complex and important as the coronavirus pandemic sounds like the stuff of science fiction, or...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news