https://www.ft.com/content/7e56cf84-6a9e-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcc...
Or if that link doesn't work: https://www.google.com/?q=FT+Neil+Ferguson+a+virus+modeller+...
The article talks about the modeller Neil Fergusson, and in my next link it talks about how he has advised the UK government:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
is by Neil M Ferguson et al.
16 March 2020 Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25561/77482
"Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand"
In my opinion, the experts were aware of the problems in approach of many governments, but the governments managed to do what they wanted (pretend nothing is happening) for too long. Also in my opinion, the smaller players believed too much to the most influential one, which has a specific history of bluffing. That even works in social contexts, but, in the words of Richard Feynman eventually:
"reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
1) E.g. The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/new-data-new-p...
The modelling most often goes wrong either when people do something bizarrely stupid that the modellers didn't think of, like farmers in the UK foot and mouth disease epidemic moving animals at night to farms that had been declared clean in order to avoid having them destroyed, or lack of good numbers to go into the model in the absence of adequate testing.