I think the experts knew the 100-240k estimate was way too high based on their social distancing mitigation. One of the key assumptions was that the New York dynamic was going to hold true for most of the rest of the country. That forced the numbers to skew high. The advantage for “the experts” was that they knew that a super high-side estimate would scare the country into compliance. Additionally, Trump got a number on the board that he knew he could claim to beat. Everybody wins by “the experts” lying about the model in the same way they lied to us about face masks.