An article I read yesterday said that 169 million Americans got their flu shots this year, which is the most ever, slightly beating 2018 & 2019’s numbers. There is an expectation that the demand in 2020 is going to be even higher. I hope that’s true, and I expect there to be a bunch of PSAs come late summer/early fall encouraging people to get their flu shots to ease the strain on hospitals.
Fortunately there didn’t seem to be any concerns yet over meeting demands for the vaccine…how soon before it’s distributed is it manufactured? Maybe the thought is that it will be made and transported during a lull in CV cases.
That sounds good, and I hope you win this bet. But your prediction may not be as easily falsifiable as you think, as the number of coronavirus deaths is not always clear. Perhaps this articlemight interest you.
Speaking of which, isn’t the UK slipping past your prediction’s window? Looking at the Worldometer for UK, it looks like they went past 1 death/million on March 17th.
Thank you for the article and yes it is of interest. (And again I hope I am wrong but to the lower side.)
KarlGauss made the point early on in this thread. Real numbers, the change in all cause mortality, will be a long time coming. Yes those will include those categorized as other causes, those in which death was indirectly caused by COVID-19 in the communities, those whose deaths were somehow in the medium term were prevented by COVID-19 in the community (likely fewer car accidents and deaths due to young adult violence), and above and beyond those who would have died of some other cause over the rest of the year. Those analyses can take years to parse out. In the meantime we have no choice but to go with the real time reporting.
elfkin477,
Influenza vaccinations are usually produced for the next season beginning a month or so ago, with production ongoing from there, and delivered beginning in August. Maybe I am being unduly anxious worrying about them having them on time this year. I worry.
I thought the 169 million was the number of the supply, not the number given. If you have a source I’d be interested. Thank you.
CarnalK the U.K. is at 44 deaths per million now day 15 per the site I am looking at anyway. Yes the prediction is that should be flattening … now. And their current growth of 24% is less than the average of the last week and more less than the average of the last 15 days, but still over the 20% mark. If they blow a few days past the 15 day mark without slowing down then indeed the hypothesis is not well supported.
Reasonable to see how my hypothesis has been holding up a few days into it.
Okay. New York State has dropped to 21% by 4/4, from 33% six days ago. I’ll grant myself that as “more like 20%”.
New York as above.
United States is at 1.19 yesterday (day 13 from 1 death/per million) down from 1.22 day 10 and 1.31 day 5.
U.K. is a bit delayed. Was 1.24 at day 15 and is now to the 1.20 on day 17. A ding on the model.
The general shape of the curve thought is so far staying not falsified though even for countries with varied approaches, from Sweden’s and the Netherlands less rigid approaches, to Denmark’s early institution of more aggressive interventions. There will be more chance to have the hypothesis falsified over the next week.
Total deaths per million today … 263 according the World O Meter site. The number will rise some more to be sure so 250 was not exactly on the mark … but “becoming flat around 250” … looking at the growth curves seems to have decent predictive value.
Well, two days away and it sure looks like we’re both going to be substantially over the real number, me more than you obviously. Looking at the charts, it really looks like the US is right on Italy’s path. That’s not great but if that holds, the US won’t double its covid deaths for another couple of weeks so my 32k guess will now be by April 23rd or so.
It would seem that the only way we’re getting to some of the higher estimates is if there i some big bounceback waves after restrictions are loosened but estimates about that I place zero trust in from even the smartest experts. Way too many unknown variables.
I know we’re supposed to keep politics out of here, so I’ll try to state this as neutrally as possible: If we’re talking about the track of this disease and the possibility of a rebound epidemic, there’s no mystery or sketchy estimation involved. The science tells us that social isolation is the way to prevent this disease from spreading.
The chance of a rebound epidemic depends on how politicians respond to the pressure to restart the economy. Even since before this pandemic hit true crisis proportions, media figures have been floating trial balloons that the economic risk should be mitigated by putting people back to work, health risk be damned. There are lots of ordinary people whose thoughts are on that same wavelength.
I’m guessing that in the US there will be enormous pressure to “re-open the economy” by early summer, followed by a big rebound in later summer.
Yeah the follow the curve model not so substantially over-estimating if it continues to follow. 16,478 deaths by yesterday. Increasing about 12 to 13% a day, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday itself to go … using 13% that’s 23,776 as of Easter Sunday, pretty much hitting that “slightly shy of 25,000” if so … a few more days to see though.
Sorry that it is that high. And has a long way to go.
That said my read of where Italy and New York were topping off was a bit low. Each now over 300 deaths per million and not done yet.
The follow the curves model is unable to go beyond where those who have gone before have gone and the critical data for the models to give believable results is still in progress. Hopefully the needed data won’t be too long in coming and meanwhile the brake will be eased off slowly enough … but some are going to ease up some before we will have to decide how to and we can use their results to make some predictions too.
On the one hand, I’m obviously glad in immediate terms that the numbers are not as high as I thought, so far. On the other, weird as it is to say, there’s a danger if the numbers are “too low”. We need to learn a lesson from this experience that prepares us for a future, possibly far more deadly, pandemic–and if the death toll is too much of a “fizzle” we may save a couple hundred thousand lives now and pay for it later with tens of millions of additional deaths. Not a good tradeoff.
I can’t possibly get on board with any logic that argues it could possibly be better for hundreds of thousands more people to die now, in order to possibly prevent some possible future occurrence from maybe possibly being a lot more deadly.
H1N1 purportedly killed 12,469 in the United States over the course of a year. Covid-19 has killed over 20,000 in six weeks and is hardly done. I’m not sure I’d call that a “fizzle” myself, but I guess we’ll see what the general public’s perception is.
I find myself idly curious if any of the skeptics or naysayers from back in February or early March, i.e. “the threat from this is exaggerated/it’s just another flu” people( not in this thread ), are now starting to view this event differently.
It’s pretty easy to show people the problems with it. I’ve used the calculator on my phone to show what doubling every 3 days looks like. You do it 10 times and that’s what 1 month looks like. The first month the numbers aren’t scary. starting with 1 person you get 512 deaths. but you can quickly show what that looks like after 2 months. 524,288 deaths. It’s amazing how fast someone can go from “that’s not so many” to the reality of a half million in 2 months.
That demonstration only works on someone who bought that a doubling every 3 days would happen for 2 months. Many didn’t and by the way, it didn’t come to pass.
Tamerlane, H1N1 was not a bad flu in an absolute number way. It was bad because it killed kids and young adults much more than usual seasonal flu does. In absolute deaths terms is was ho-hum.
How about those of us who have been saying “Crap, this might be as bad as an extra flu level event!”?
My FEAR has been that this could be a bad flu-level event occurring in a compressed time period. I am viewing this as that, and that is horribly bad.
The 2017-18 influenza year was a recent bad flu year (even if few noticed that) and killed over 60K in the United States (by some estimates more like in the 90K+ range). Globally “389 000 deaths from respiratory causes are associated with influenza each year on average”. Some years lots worse than others.
That is not JUST anything even if we are used to that yearly carnage as normal and fairly casual about it. It may not be the Horsemen riding but a “fizzle” it aint either.
The plus side is that it may be mostly hitting us off-season to influenza. The big worry will be what happens if the brakes aren’t really let off until near the Fall and a second wave hits synchronized with influenza.
I have no argument at all with your take. But your take is informed ;).
Most people saying “it’s just another flu” are using that as a dismissal of the seriousness of this event. Often combined with “all these extreme measures are unnecessary or counterproductive.” Indeed far too many people are rather dismissive of influenza as well, hence the large not-bothering-to-get-vaccinated cohort.
My “growth curve” approach has failed in one prediction to the low end and one to the high end:
Sadly Italy kept going up farther than I thought it would and NYC has ended up running higher than Italy’s deaths/million rather than less as I thought it would.
Happily the prediction of “slightly shy of 25,000” U.S. COVID-19 attributed deaths as of Easter Sunday was at least a slight overcall with the number coming in at just over 22,000 - which I would state is a smidge more than “slightly shy”.
That said I think overall the curves approach has held up moderately well overall so far. May the U.S. deaths continue to be on track for less than it predicted!
