> many models predicted over 2 million deaths by now

citation needed.

Here are many models that we can backcheck: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/

> without action by the government and individuals to slow the spread of coronavirus and suppress new cases, 2.2 million people in the United States could die

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/coronavirus-fatality-r...

In addition to the many articles that have been published, it has been possible since early March for people to extrapolate the graphs that were widely available. Those graphs, and their potential shortcomings, were widely discussed, and a "citizen scientist" could interpret them with reasonable confidence. My own analysis at the time was something like this:

If the graph keeps going like the way it looks, it will consume effectively the entire population by month X, with Y percent dying. While this was not a formal epidemiological model, it allowed two tentative conclusions:

1. If the curve (a straight line on a semi-log graph) shows signs of turning over, I will breathe a huge sigh of relief, the sooner the better.

2. The curve was a "sniff test" for whether more advanced predictions were believable, notably, any prediction that did not roughly follow this baseline needed a darn good explanation.

I wish the historical view on this site projected forward to the present. I'd like to know which model was the least wrong from the beginning.

Comparing what has happened to doing absolutely nothing (effectively having no health system) is of limited use. How about a comparison to how things have gone in peer countries? Our death rate is 600 per million which is many times that of the likes of Canada, Germany, and Japan.

It was talked about in the media to scare people into compliance, so it served some use.

My take is that "the US" as a cohesive entity with a central government did next to nothing. The US has acted as an uncoordinated collection of state and local governments, private businesses, and some other institutions such as universities for both better and worse.

For example, the graphs for COVID cases in my county reflect the county government working with no coordination at the state or federal level, the predictable effect of having a large public university in town, and private companies that are managing the production and analysis of COVID tests with no public policy guidance.

I think this is just the result of multiplying the estimated IFR by the US population. No model I'm aware of did this.

No credible forecast predicted 2 million deaths by now (I'm sure there were some stupid one that just projected a exponential growth curve forward or something but hopefully they had large disclaimers that they are only accurate very short term).

The CDC in February (back when they weren't compromised) did modelling that predicted between 200,000 and 1.7M deaths in total for the entire epidemic. This March piece from NYT has the details: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/us/coronavirus-deaths-est...

The imperial college COVID response team (one of the major forecasts) predicted 2.2 million deaths in the US without action.

> without action by the government and individuals to slow the spread of coronavirus and suppress new cases, 2.2 million people in the United States could die

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/coronavirus-fatality-r...

Sure, that was all time (not by now) though.

No - look at the report - projection was >2 million by end of summer

Thoughts on the end date?

30,000,000 to 40,000,000 have died from AIDS over the decades for some reference point.