We increased our forecasts over the past week after incorporating several new factors:
- A potential loss of immunity after >6 months
- Further relaxation of policies
- Increased interactions (school reopenings, return to work, etc)
- Plateau in cases/hospitalizations
There is currently a lack of consensus among the top models about the short-term deaths forecasts.
Our model and the COVIDhub ensemble model both suggest a possible plateau in reported deaths over the next few weeks.
Here's the week-over-week status of important metrics:
To conclude, it seems that the fall wave is inevitably here. But how severe this becomes is still very much uncertain.
Regions that were largely spared in Mar-Aug may be more susceptible. This does not mean that other regions can let their guards down - no place is immune.
Our confidence intervals expands as we head towards November to account for the increased uncertainty.
We must prepare for the worst and hope for the best. The actions we take over the next few weeks can set the course for what's to come.
/END
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People were worried cases would spike further when the UK lifted almost all remaining restrictions in July. The opposite happened.
We must acknowledge that restrictions aren't all that effective in Western countries.
(Except Australia, who just entered their 6th lockdown)
It's interesting that some experts would rather question the accuracy of the data than acknowledge this reality.
Many bad papers looked at these curves in 2020 & concluded that more restrictions is followed by a decline in cases, when the decline would've happened regardless.
If we apply the same flawed logic here, one can say that the lifting of restrictions is followed by fewer cases.
Of course, the modeling isn’t perfect & never will be. But this ensemble of forecasts coming from 250+ researchers has helped add clarity for many over the past year.
The CDC deserves credit for taking a conscious, hands-off approach on this.
That said, I do think there's too much focus on modeling cases/deaths. For ex, I've haven't seen many efforts on vaccination forecasts or infections/immunity estimates.
There may be some reluctance in the general scientific community to do this, so it's hard to blame one entity.
Is containing COVID-19 a requirement for preserving the economy? My analysis suggests: probably not.
In the US, there is no correlation between Covid deaths & changes in unemployment rates.
However, blue states are much more likely to have higher increases in unemployment.
🧵
We can dive deeper by looking at levels of restrictions in each state, using the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT).
More restrictions in a state is NOT correlated with fewer COVID-19 deaths.
However, more restrictions IS correlated with higher unemployment.
The most interesting data point is South Dakota.
As the only state to never order closures of restaurants, bars & retail, SD actually saw a 0.5% DECREASE in unemployment since the pandemic started. It also never ordered a mask mandate.