Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are calling for a hearing to review the "modeling platforms" used to project the extent and impact of the coronavirus pandemic, claiming they exhibit "conflicting data" and have led to policies “placing extraordinary burdens” on Americans.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and other lawmakers penned a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., urging her to schedule a “formal hearing” -- either in Washington D.C., “the field or virtually” -- to review the coronavirus modeling information used to make decisions, such as stay-at-home orders, across the country.
“At the forefront of decisions regarding response efforts lies our ability to understand the breadth and depth of the spread of the illness,” Roy and colleagues wrote noting that, at this point, there have been “two primary coronavirus modeling platforms—one from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, and one from the Imperial College of London.
“While widely distributed and used by many thought leaders, these models have exhibited conflicting data over time, as we all as within comparison of the models themselves,” they said. “These models have also undergone multiple wildly varying revisions, and have not seemed to account for real world behavioral changes, even demonstrating assumptions at odds with visible data in real time.”
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