A reminder from #MacTheobio that they showed in Feb what would happen in Ontario if public health measures were lifted too quickly. Red line is the forecast, filled circles the data used to fit the model, open circles show the actual observed data. 1/n

Their forecasts are shared with the @COVIDSciOntario and included in briefings to the province. At the time, cases were declining and the forecasts were considered alarming, but as we can now see, they were correct. 2/n

They identified the importance of the more transmissible variants of concern and showed how quickly the situation would change once restrictions were lifted. 3/n

This is an example of a model showing us where we were heading. Had we acted on this information, rather than waiting to see if the 'models came true', we'd likely be in the more desirable position of discussing why the model was so wrong and alarmist. 4/n

You can read a complete description of the group's work here: https://mac-theobio.github.io/forecasts/outputs/ON_accuracy.html. Thanks to @irenapapst @bolkerb @jd_mathbio @DavidJDEarn for this important work. /end