That is not what happened.

They assured the casesv would follow a bell curve. Then they said that places like China had a lockdown, and the US also has a lockdown, so surely same trajectory. They moved the curvesv around to match, and voila, COVID eradicated in the US by August.

It was abundantly clear to everyone that rules in the US were nowhere near as tight as in China, and they were not rigorously enforced either.

IHME's assumptions were complete trash, and this was known at the time, because they published their ridiculous methodology. You can't give them the benefit of the doubt, because there is no doubt. They sucked, simple as that.