Why are *reported* deaths in this slide so different than projected deaths? Was this a model originally developed in March or something? It is very strange.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/us/coronavirus-updates.html

Projecting ~200K new detected cases each day **by the end of the month** from a current baseline of ~30K is also a LOT, even with quite pessimistic assumptions. I would encourage some caution with taking these at face value.

Indeed, this also doesn't make much sense. https://twitter.com/NickRiccardi/status/1257341533633814532?s=20

Without more context and explanation, are we sure that the White House isn't just leaking these to make the actual, merely-awful numbers look better by comparison?

Yeah, could also be: someone wants to scare Trump out of touting re-opening, so they're releasing some sort of worst-case scenario or conjectural scenario and it's being portrayed as the base case. https://twitter.com/jbview/status/1257348058356072450?s=20

So the Washington Post adds a lot more context, though I think their headline is misleading. The 200k cases/day number was from an incomplete draft version of model and apparently one of many scenarios, not some sort of official White House estimate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/government-report-predicts-covid-19-cases-will-reach-200000-a-day-by-june-1/2020/05/04/02fe743e-8e27-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html

The NYT is doing great work on COVID-19. But especially given how much confusion already exists about projections and models, it was irresponsible of them to release the slide deck and put such bold, somewhat misleading headlines on it without providing any of that context.

Can't believe the NYT made this their print headline. There is no evidence this is some sort of official White House projection; instead, reporting from other news organizations contracts that. And parts of it literally don't make any sense (see above). https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1257653377250611202?s=20