“It became clear that we’re not going to reach herd immunity in 2021, at least definitely not across the whole country,” he says. “And I think it’s important, especially if you’re trying to instill confidence, that we make sensible paths to when we can go back to normal. We shouldn’t be pegging that on an unrealistic goal like reaching herd immunity. I’m still cautiously optimistic that my original forecast in February, for a return to normal in the summer, will be valid.”
In early March, he packed up shop entirely—he figured he’d made what contribution he could. “I wanted to step back and let the other modelers and experts do their work,” he says. “I don’t want to muddle the space.”
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Source: Lessons from the pandemic’s superstar data scientist, Youyang Gu | MIT Technology Review