General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsInstitute for Health Metrics and Evaluation COVID-19 Projections
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent population health research center at UW Medicine, part of the University of Washington, that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world's most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them. IHME makes this information freely available so that policymakers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to best improve population health.
The IHME's projections of demands on US Hospitals over the next few weeks are pretty sobering. The CDC obviously has done similar projections, but no one is making such projections public except to say that there is a huge need.
http://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
Of course, as noted in this article, there limits to such mathematical models:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/mathematics-life-and-death-how-disease-models-shape-national-shutdowns-and-other
In their review of U.S. outbreak modeling, Rivers and her colleagues note that most of the key players are academics with little role in policy. They dont typically participate in the decision-making processes they sort of pivot into a new world when an emergency hits, she says. It would be more effective if they could be on-site with the government, working side by side with decision makers. Rivers argues for the creation of a National Infectious Disease Forecasting Center, akin to the National Weather Service. It would be the primary source of models in a crisis and strengthen outbreak science in peacetime.
Policymakers have relied too heavily on COVID-19 models, says Devi Sridhar, a global health expert at the University of Edinburgh. Im not really sure whether the theoretical models will play out in real life. And its dangerous for politicians to trust models that claim to show how a little-studied virus can be kept in check, says Harvard University epidemiologist William Hanage. Its like, youve decided youve got to ride a tiger, he says, except you dont know where the tiger is, how big it is, or how many tigers there actually are.
Models are at their most useful when they identify something that is not obvious, Kucharski says. One valuable function, he says, was to flag that temperature screening at airports will miss most coronavirus-infected people.
Theres also a lot that models dont capture. They cannot anticipate, say, the development of a faster, easier test to identify and isolate infected people or an effective antiviral that reduces the need for hospital beds. Thats the nature of modeling: We put in what we know, says Ira Longini, a modeler at the University of Florida. Nor do most models factor in the anguish of social distancing, or whether the public obeys orders to stay home. Recent data from Hong Kong and Singapore suggest extreme social distancing is hard to keep up, says Gabriel Leung, a modeler at the University of Hong Kong. Both cities are seeing an uptick in cases that he thinks stem at least in part from response fatigue. We were the poster children because we started early. And we went quite heavy, Leung says. Now, It's 2 months already, and people are really getting very tired. He thinks both cities may be on the brink of a major sustained local outbreak.
Long lockdowns to slow a disease can also have catastrophic economic impacts that may themselves affect public health. Its a three-way tussle, Leung says, between protecting health, protecting the economy, and protecting peoples well-being and emotional health.
enough
(13,235 posts)Squinch
(50,773 posts)In New York alone the numbers will be worse than this.
TomCADem
(17,378 posts)New York is currently at a 100 deaths a day, so I would not be celebrating 500 deaths in a day as some sort of victory.
Squinch
(50,773 posts)TomCADem
(17,378 posts)You said: "Italy is having 1000 deaths a day. We will exceed that."
The model assumes that social distancing remains in effect. Also, Italy (60 million) has three times the population of New York (20 million). So, you are projecting a worse death rate than Italy?
Squinch
(50,773 posts)TomCADem
(17,378 posts)It is a drop down menu.
Squinch
(50,773 posts)compares to 80,000.
pat_k
(9,313 posts)Great minds and all. I posted a thread about the site at the same time you did (within a minute anyway).
Here's a couple other resources, in case you've missed them:
https://covidtracking.com/ -- a project spearheaded by the Atlantic reporting latest compilation of test totals, cases, pending tests, hospitalizations, and related resources by state. They also grade the quality of the data, which I think is very useful.
https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19_data/ -- data visualizations
TomCADem
(17,378 posts)This is sobering that even with social distancing, thousands of people will die. It also reinforces how the delay in testing really allowed community spread to take foot sort of like closing the barn door after the horses escaped.
pat_k
(9,313 posts)It didn't have to be like this. Even with social distancing, we are likely to lose 40,000 to 160,000 Americans. I know a lot of people are projecting far worse, but even the low end, 40,000 is horrible -- and all the more horrible because it didn't have to be like this.
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Timeline of failures -- lost shot at containment
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=13168592