I am clearly not an epidemiologist or expert in infections diseases. I have just been following along like everyone else who believes in science. Data in this post is of Jan 5, 2021
On December 12, 2020, I created a model of how I thought the pandemic might play through the end of 2021. The factors I took into account at the time were: The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays surge, the roll out schedule and potential problems of the two vaccines, the fact that many people, nearly half, would refuse to take the vaccine, we don’t currently have a plan for vaccinating those under 16 years old, the people who wouldn’t comply with safe practices, and hopefully a decreasing mortality rate due to advances in treatment methods. The thing I didn’t take into account was the introduction of two more virulent mutations which will certainly spread. There is some question if the South African strain is resistant to the current vaccines and may require some modification to the formulation along with testing for efficacy. There will probably be more mutations come along. I have used seven day moving averages to smooth day to day reporting fluctuations. My forecast was a little arbitrary and used many linear functions rather than pretend to have a lot of science behind it. I happen to show February 14, 2021 as the worst day of the pandemic for new cases with gradual improvement until the end of the year. I assumed the Christmas surge would be over by then. I used a simple percentage of new cases to show deaths with a 14 day lag. The percentage I used is a little lower than the historical average because I assumed our skills in saving people would get better. This assumption is currently being hampered by the fact that hospitals can’t even treat all the patients and some are being allowed to die without lifesaving efforts.
My forecast is very grim and we all hope I am wrong. My forecast for new cases on Dec. 31,2021 is: 71,646,642. We are currently 396,000 under my projection but the Christmas surge is starting to weaken that trend. My death forecast for Dec. 31, 2021 is 1,000,029. We are currently running 1,329 over that line.
We are currently 25 days into a 385 day projection, so there is a lot of room for change. I really hope I am wrong on this. I will update the stats periodically.
Pete's Wisdom 