Modeling, Covid, Herd Immunity, and Are We There Yet?

 Here's a grab-bag of articles and links I've found interesting in the last few weeks:

The Hard Lessons of Modeling the Coronavirus Pandemic at Quanta

University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation: front page | COVID-19

 One bright data scientist doing his best, using machine learning: Interview | Projections | Path to Herd Immunity

I was quietly playing this game too last spring and summer, using genetic algorithms and GitHub data.  It was... interesting, but not especially enlightening.  Watching the weekly medical reporting cycle add a spike-and-dip to the numbers while listening to the media scream "we're all gonna die!" and "pandemic's over!" twice a week in time with medical data dumps was initially amusing, but mostly frustrating.  I mean, isn't basic data smoothing when an obvious cycle is built into the reporting... obvious?

I guess not.  Anyway, those last three links are the best analysis and forecasting I've seen lately.