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> no one predicted anything remotely correct regarding Corona.

That is simply not true. The RKI (Germany's main institute for disease control and prevention) almost exactly predicted the current Covid numbers back in July [1]. The top left of the picture on page 7 shows the prediction under the assumption that 65% of Germans get vaccinated; currently 68% of Germans are vaccinated.

[1]: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/Infekt/EpidBull/Archiv/2021/Au...

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I fail to see how their prediction was "almost exactly correct."

The prediction expected a bell curve peaking at the end of December, at around 400 7d incidence, assuming ~65% vaccinated.

We are at then end of november, ~68% vaccinated, and the 7d incidence is already above 400, and still rising.

We can only hope that they got the shape right, the timing slighly off and the peek not too off.

Probably depends on the input parameters. Lots of calls for freedom days and such as well as a general removal of measures probably changed the model conditions considerably.

Where are our goalposts?

I personally think that for such a chaotic, human system, a prediction from six-months previous is pretty good if it's within a few weeks and probably less than an order of magnitude.

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