At FiveThirtyEight, we spend a lot of time modeling outcomes of elections and sporting events. But, as you might have guessed, modeling the course of a novel pandemic is very different. There are so many variables and such little historical data to work with. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, senior science writer Maggie Koerth and quantitative editor Laura Bronner explain how much we don’t know about the COVID-19 virus. They also discuss how epidemiologists are trying to overcome those challenges to lessen the uncertainty about the toll the pandemic might take.

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