COVID-19 confirmed cases/death
- Thread starter kickserv
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Its been 2 weeks. This number was WAAAAY the fuck off. Everyone is taking shots in the dark and missing. It doesn't matter if you say things are getting better or worse. You don't know shit. No one does.
This could last a year or could end this month or next. An ID doctor from CDC says she holds hope in the fact that this can end as quickly as it started.
Pretty sure the prediction was for the month not 2 weeks. It's still lower but they didn't predict 100k for 2 weeks. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think so.
Right! Nobody knows shit.
This isn't proof that no one knows anything today - it's proof that no one knew anything 2 weeks ago. And I don't think anyone was hiding that fact - the consensus was that there were a lot of different ways this thing could go. You've seen a lot more stabilization of the models in the last week thanks to having a lot more testing, data, and just overall actual experience rather than projecting based on assumptions. The U of Washington model has been great. That's where the 100k number came from - that was the number it predicted on 4/1. Mid last week they dropped it down to 80k and then last Friday they dropped it to 60k. This week it's gone back up to 68k (total deaths by August - 51k by May 1st) so of course the projections continue to change and will keep doing so. But they'll change by a couple thousand - not the wild swings of tens or hundreds of thousands that we'd been seeing.
Of course, the big assumption baked into that model is that we all continue to stay home through May 31st. If that changes - then yes I'd agree with you that we'll be back in wild west territory with everybody just guessing as to what's going to happen.
Well, I should have linked to the news article. It had him quoting it in a press conference. I'll try and find it. He said 2 weeks.
Models have been wrong the entire fucking time. No one is going to convince me to start listening now.
Also.....I know models are estimates.....but the thing is.....when a weather model calls for a hurricane and you only get snow......fuck that.
It's hard to get a concise model based on zero information. They are inputting data every day to get a better picture.
The wild swings on any data gathering models come in the early stages.
That's just not true. The media (and the public at large) just don't take the time to understand them. No model attempts to hit the number on the head - they project a range. When you have absent/incomplete data and assumptions that are just guesses, you will end up with a much broader range. Then you throw a trend line in the middle to say that there is an equal chance of the numbers being higher or lower than that number. But no one likes to see ranges - they want a number. So the number that gets reported is wherever the trend line falls on a specific day. When the actual number comes out different, people say "the model was wrong" - but it wasn't. A model is only "wrong" if the actuals prove to be outside the predicted range. And the more time goes by and more data gets added, those ranges narrow significantly. So - for whatever reason - you apparently decided to put stock in these models when they admitted there was still tons of variability, and are now declaring them wrong just as they are becoming useful and stable.
I'm waiting for the U of Washington model to update for today. We will see what they predict for the end of April. Whatever the trend line says - I'm willing to bet they hit the actual number within 2500. We can then revisit this in 2 weeks and one of us can admit to being wrong. Deal?
See below.
Yeah, I got it. You're completely okay with the President of our nation to just go ahead say 100,000 deaths in two weeks.......with no data. Cool.
What's your theory. They sat in a room and said, "Heads we go high, tails we go low"?
I said nothing even remotely approaching that. You said the models were garbage and I refuted that. Per Jack's request/edict - I very pointedly was not bringing politics into this.
I have now been scouring the net for the last hour trying to find any reference to anyone saying what you claim to have seen/heard. This is the closest I can find, from this Time article on March 31st:
President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned Americans to brace for a ?hell of a bad two weeks? ahead as the White House projected there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus pandemic even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained.
I think that's a poorly constructed sentence. I believe that "100k to 240k" refers to the overall death total (based on everything else in the article) but coming immediately after the quote about the next 2 weeks gives a misleading impression that it was referring to that timeline.
From later in the article:
The jaw-dropping projections were laid out during a grim, two-hour White House briefing. Officials described a death toll that in a best-case scenario would likely be greater than the more than 53,000 American lives lost during World War I. And the model?s high end neared the realm of possibility that Americans lost to the virus could approach the 291,000 Americans killed on the battlefield during World II.
So there's a range given right there - best case being more than 53k and worst case being more than 291k. That was 15 days ago. Current projection of 68,000 - right in the range and closer to the best-case scenario. There was not "no data" - the data was limited so the best they were able to do is create a range of ~240k. With 2 more weeks of data - that predicted range is now 30,188 to 175,965 deaths (145k spread). In 2 more weeks, that spread will narrow further.
For the record - do not take any of the above as my endorsement of anything that comes out of the White House. To the extent that they say things which are supported by scientifically-validated models - I agree with them. To the extent they don't - I don't.
I know.....this is what I'm talking about though. Models led our nation to believe we would experience 100,000 deaths inside two weeks.
Are you fucking kidding me? You didnt see the news two weeks ago?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/31/politics/trump-white-house-guidelines-coronavirus/index.html
The way I read and understood everything I was hearing was the prediction for more than 100,000 deaths would be the total after we get through this, not just for 2 weeks. They predicted a painful 2 weeks, but not more than 100,000 deaths in 2 weeks.
That is another report of the same press conference I quoted to you in the Time article. Predicted 100k-240k total deaths - not that those would occur in the next 2 weeks.
First sentence is almost word for word the same:
President Donald Trump warned of a "painful" and "tough" two-week stretch ahead as he extended nationwide distancing measures that -- even if followed closely -- could still mean more than 100,000 and up to 240,000 Americans die from coronavirus.
