Full record
25% rightsocietyGlobal cumulative COVID-19 cases will exceed 1 million by ~March 30 and 10 million by ~April 13, 2020.
A scored prediction by Benjamin Cowen, made on .
Scored prediction
25% rightsociety“we're gonna cross 1 million cumulative cases in about a week and we'll cross 10 million and about three weeks or so”
Global cumulative COVID-19 cases will exceed 1 million by ~March 30 and 10 million by ~April 13, 2020.
- Made on
- 2020-03-23
- Outcome
- 25% right
- Importance
- 3 / 5
- Effect on score
- +0.84
What counted as right
- Status
- resolved
- Settled on
- 2020-04-13
Global cumulative cases exceed 1,000,000 by ~2020-03-30 and 10,000,000 by ~2020-04-13.
Compound criterion requires BOTH: >1M by ~2020-03-30 AND >10M by ~2020-04-13. The 1M sub-threshold was met (a few days late, ~2020-04-02). The 10M sub-threshold was decisively NOT met — actual global total on 2020-04-13 was ~1.77M per WHO, and 10M was not reached until 2020-06-28. The exponential extrapolation was off by ~5.6x at the deadline. Evidence is definitive. (No outcome value assigned; the mixed within-record result is left for the quantify/score stage.)
Sources
COVID-19: Continued exponential growth and discussion on market effects
YouTube ·
Evidence of what happened
Global cumulative confirmed cases passed 1,000,000 on 2020-04-02 (Johns Hopkins/AFP tallies) — the first sub-threshold ('by ~2020-03-30') was met roughly 3 days after the stated target date.
WHO Situation Report 84 reported 1,773,084 confirmed cases globally as of 10:00 CET on 2020-04-13 — the deadline date. This is ~1.77 million, far short of the 10,000,000 second sub-threshold.
Global cumulative cases did not actually reach 10,000,000 until 2020-06-28 (Johns Hopkins tally) — about 2.5 months after the 2020-04-13 deadline.
Corrections
- certainty verbatim marker: Scoreable record whose p depends on certainty; 'gonna cross' is a high-confidence commitment marker and should not be null.
Effect on the score
+0.84- How sure they sounded
- 85%
- Outcome
- 25% right
- Importance
- 3 / 5
This page shows the scored prediction as published; the site doesn't recompute or adjust the score.
Where this came from
Global cumulative COVID-19 cases will exceed 1 million by ~…- Methodology version
- v1.0.0
- Last computed
- August 2, 2026
- Made on
- 2020-03-23
How this profile was built
Scored by independent judges
Predictions gathered and sourced
Independently verified against sources