Direction: Read the following passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
The purpose of pandemic modelling is to generate a probabilistic overview of the future and mathematical modelling has become a popular, creative exercise, with several models and forecasts being made available on pre-print servers and pending peer-review. The latest model is expected to be published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research this week, but it appears to be a quotidian exercise. The datasets it has relied on are publicly available and the modelling employs a category of models called SEIR that estimates, within a population, those Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, and Recovered. It is extremely dependent on the quality of data that is used as an input and relies as much on simplifying assumptions that sacrifice complexity for comprehension but there is nothing to suggest, from what is known about the exercise, that it is more likely to be true than similar estimates from scores of models the world over that subscribe to a certain degree of rigour. Experts associated with the pandemic have reiterated many times that mathematical modelling ought not to be taken literally. The latest assessment too should then be used not to critique or justify past decisions but dwell more on the future. For instance, if the model suggests that the pandemic would extinguish by February with a dramatic dip by December, then should the accelerated clinical trials of potential vaccines be top priority? Mathematical models, to be useful, must induce policy or behavioural change to avoid their own worst-case scenarios and this latest assessment must be seen — no more, no less — as a tool to this end.