Because unfortunately, they mostly are conflated to a lesser or greater degree.
They’re conflated by many people but the science really doesn’t care about the politics. Why do people keep saying it’s political? The virus is apolitical, it’s been
politicized. Don’t let the politics enter into a reasonable discussion in how we should be living our lives.
Models, by definition use a variety of inputs, some of which are guesses and assumptions. Those guesses and assumptions are influenced to various degrees by the (political) bias of the person designing (or ordering) said model. Also, despite disclaimers buried in the footnotes of the model, they often are publicized and promoted as gospel, lacking humility.
All very eloquent and wise but this discussion was about how the models being used to influence policy were actually pretty accurate. It’s a popular right-wing talking point that all politicians based their policy on Neil Ferguson’s model (which may or may not prove right) but that’s just a flat out lie. Many models have actually proven dead on. And those were the models that a lot of policy (including the federal policy in the US) was based on.
Indeed, and as long as the narrative of the lockdowns was to flatten the curve, it had credibility. There's no way to really avoid getting infected as long as a person is not totally isolated, but we can slow down the rate of infection to avoid overwhelming the medical system and allow more time to learn HOW TO TREAT THE SERIOUSLY ILL (any talk about waiting for a vaccine is a blatant lie, as no reasonable person expects a vaccine in less than 18 months, and that's being extremely optimistic and probably not realistic).
I agree with you that not overwhelming the system and allowing time to learn how to treat patients were and are important goals but I strongly disagree with you that “there’s no real way to avoid getting infected”. If restrictions, testing, and contact tracing are implemented properly (as they have been in many if not most countries around the world) there is every reason to believe that the majority of people will never get infected.
To your last point, I’m not sure who you call reasonable people but a very large number of epidemiologists have said they believe there will be a mass produced vaccine by January 2021. If you’d bet on an outcome we can take this over to JS and I’d put money down on that happening.