The issue is that the example nostromo gave (40m) was not intended to be predictive of what would actually happen. It was based on a worst case / left unchecked scenario (useful for establishing an upper bound), and therefore irrelevant w/r/t the system responding to the model.

Also many early models were based on SARS and MERS because we had no comparable illnesses, and these were worst case respiratory diseases.

You claimed:

> The models tended to overshoot the number of deaths by huge amounts. For example, the Imperial College of London estimated 40m deaths in 2020 instead of the 2m that occurred.

The very article you cited pointed out that the 40m figure was based on a "left unchecked" scenario. It was not an attempt to predict the actual number of deaths that would occur. Claiming that this is indicative of overshooting because the actual number of deaths is 2m is completely wrong.