C19 Prediction Survey Thread

post by jacob_cannell · 2020-03-30T00:53:49.375Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

I'm curious about people's current predictions of future:

As a schelling point, let's use May 1 (5/01/2020) as the prediction date, and worldometer as the data source.

Predictions should be in the form of a simple distribution such as a normal or lognormal.

My current predictions:

US cases: lognormal(13.0, 0.3) mode: 404k

US deaths: lognormal(10.0, 0.6) mode: 15.3k

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comment by ErickBall · 2020-03-30T18:45:37.282Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

May 1st prediction:

US deaths: lognormal(11.4, 0.5) mode: 69k -- this is roughly equivalent, per capita, to what Italy is at currently (March 30th). Therefore it assumes the current growth will slow considerably. 15k is not even on the radar. I expect we will hit 3000 today, and 15k around April 7th.

US confirmed cases: lognormal(15, 0.7) mode: 2 million. This is more uncertain because it largely depends on how fast we ramp up testing.

Replies from: ErickBall
comment by ErickBall · 2020-04-08T01:30:11.579Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Update: it is the evening of April 7th and the latest data from plague.com has the US death count at 12,846. It looks like we'll hit 15,000 on the 9th probably, so I was a tad pessimistic. People have been talking about how new infections are slowing down and they think everything will peak in mid-April, but I don't see much reason to believe it. The trend continues much the way it was before.