It originally had an upward range of 2.2 million before they reversed themselves after the first week to 200K. They’ve been steadily dialing it back since.
I recognize that. Their models have always included yuge confidence intervals too.
My point is that the NYT dipwad is complaining about minutiae after being quite late to the party.
The discrepancy you point out is the one for the UW to publicly explain [and there could be good reasons].
Not the IHME model.
The Imperial College had an upper range of 2.2m for the US if no mitigation measures were taken.
No one thought that was realistic because of course we reacted, but it was a stab at how bad it could have been.