Okay, I can see how you would interpret the source that way. It certainly does use statistical data to approximate deaths. It feels a bit disingenuous to state it as “its estimated that 600,000 people would have died by now”. That makes it sound like it’s just a number pulled from estimates of how much things cost, at least in my opinion.
One of the studies on Malaria was able to create “near-real-time projections” for 2025 malaria cases. A projection doesn’t mean the same thing as an estimate. You can can estimate that 50 out of 100 coin tosses would be heads, and you’d probably be right, but if you projected it, you’d have to measure the dimensions of the specific coin, control for wind, etc, and while you still might be wrong, you’d likely be less wrong than merely estimating based on the two possible outcomes and a glancing observation that the coin is roughly symmetric/evenly distributed.
In this study we synthesised the most up-to-date information of all-funder volumes of key malaria control interventions (ITN, IRS, ACT, SMC) with PMI data on planned volumes and spatial targeting of funding in 2025 to derive near-real-time projections of malaria control intervention coverage in Africa under two scenarios: a business-as-usual scenario in which PMI commodities procured and distributed as previously planned versus a ‘no-PMI’ scenario in which PMI funding and technical assistance is absent.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.28.25323072v1
Okay, I can see how you would interpret the source that way. It certainly does use statistical data to approximate deaths. It feels a bit disingenuous to state it as “its estimated that 600,000 people would have died by now”. That makes it sound like it’s just a number pulled from estimates of how much things cost, at least in my opinion.
One of the studies on Malaria was able to create “near-real-time projections” for 2025 malaria cases. A projection doesn’t mean the same thing as an estimate. You can can estimate that 50 out of 100 coin tosses would be heads, and you’d probably be right, but if you projected it, you’d have to measure the dimensions of the specific coin, control for wind, etc, and while you still might be wrong, you’d likely be less wrong than merely estimating based on the two possible outcomes and a glancing observation that the coin is roughly symmetric/evenly distributed.