This is the time of year when people make lists, most of which I ignore. A common sport is to look at the predictions that people made for the year and to see how they panned out. Making predictions is always a tricky business, especially when it comes to politics so we should not be surprised when many of them turn out to be wrong.

This article compiles a list of predictions that went wrong during this year. While it makes for amusing reading, I think it lumps together two different categories.

One category are those predictions that were mistaken but defensible based on the best available knowledge at the time. In this category, I include the prediction by a public health analyst back in May that “We’re not going to see an effective [coronavirus] vaccine proven safe until well into 2021, if then”. Based on the fact that the record for the shortest time for all previous vaccines was four years, this was not an unreasonable prediction.

The people who deserve to be ridiculed are those whose predictions are not based on evidence or even reality but are driven by an ideological agenda or as part of a propaganda effort or are simply wishful thinking about what people hope will happen. In this category is Kayleigh McEnany’s prediction that Trump will keep the coronavirus from coming to the U.S. and Trump’s multiple predictions that the virus would go away ‘soon’.