The 2020 pandemic left epidemiologists in a difficult and heavily criticised position, which economists should be able to empathise with from their experience with the 2008 financial crisis. In early March a need for policies regarding Covid 19 was raised and therefore there was a need for models that predicted the course of Covid. As a result, researchers at Imperial College London used a model to calculate the potential death toll of the virus along with the assumption that people and the government would take no measures to stop the spread. Their conclusion of 500 000 British deaths, which in reality has been 5 million deaths, drew intense criticism from economists, due to the assumptions being unrealistic as they did not reflect the natural human behaviour of protecting yourself from harm. It was later stated that economists misunderstood the aim of the model, which was supposed to provide an estimate for the effects of potential policy intervention.
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