Wishful thinking led to Christmas catastrophe
Weak warnings from Nphet, lax regulation and optimistic relaxing of social distancing all led to the explosion of case numbers
Conservative warnings from Nphet, poor decision-making from the government and family visits over Christmas all influenced the unprecedented case numbers seen in the past three weeks.
Statisticians working for Nphet initially warned that case numbers could reach such peaks before Christmas, but thought that such high numbers were “unlikely”.
“We did run this as a scenario, but we thought we would never get there,” Professor Cathal Walsh, a statistician on the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory ...
