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This is: Covid 1/21: Turning the Corner , published by Zvi on the LessWrong.
Aside from worries over the new strains, I would be saying this was an exceptionally good week.
Both deaths and positive test percentages took a dramatic turn downwards, and likely will continue that trend for at least several weeks. Things are still quite short-term bad in many places, but things are starting to improve. Even hospitalizations are slightly down.
It is noticeably safer out there than it was a few weeks ago, and a few weeks from now will be noticeably safer than it is today.
Studies came out that confirmed that being previously infected conveys strong immunity for as long as we have been able to measure it. As usual, the findings were misrepresented, but the news is good. I put my analysis here in a distinct post, so it can be linked to on its own.
We had a peaceful transition of power, which is always a historic miracle to be celebrated.
Vaccination rollout is still a disaster compared to what we would prefer, with new disasters on the horizon (with several sections devoted to all that), but we are getting increasing numbers of shots into increasing numbers of arms, and that is what matters most. In many places we have made the pivot from ‘plenty of vaccine and not enough arms to put shots into’ to the better problem of ‘plenty of arms to put vaccine into, but not enough shots.’ Then all we have to do is minimize how many shots go in the trash, including the extra shots at the bottom of the vial, and do everything we can to ramp up manufacturing capacity. Which it seems can still be meaningfully done.
The problem is that the new strains are coming.
The English strain will arrive first, within a few months. That’s definitely happening, and the only question is how bad it’s going to get before we can turn the tide. We are in a race against time.
The South African and Brazillian strains are not coming as fast, but are potentially even scarier. There are signs of potential escape from not only vaccination but previous infection, potentially allowing reinfection to take place. See the section on them for details, and if you can help provide better information, please do so. We need clarity on this, and we need it badly.
There are also all the other new strains being talked about, which are probably nothing, but there’s always the chance that’s not true.
But first, the good news, and it is very, very good. Let’s run the numbers.
The Numbers
Predictions
Prediction last week: 14.0% positive rate on 11.7 million tests, and an average of 3,650 deaths.
Results: 11.9% positive rate on 11.3 million tests, and an average of 3,043 deaths.
Both numbers are hugely pleasant surprises, and this is the biggest directional miss I’ve had on deaths.
Last week we were at 3,335 deaths per day, and I figured things would keep getting worse for another week or two. Instead, things are already on their way to rapid improvement, unless there were massive shifts in when deaths were reported that made last week look worse than it was.
For infections, I did predict a drop (last week was 15.2%) and we got a much more dramatic drop than I expected. This was wonderful news, and it seems like this should continue.
The caveat is that Tuesday and Wednesday of this week both look suspiciously good on both stats, such that I suspect missing data. I don’t know if somehow Martin Luther King Day actually mattered to reporting, or the inauguration and fears of disruptions around it were distracting, or what, but we should worry that this is getting a bit ahead of ourselves, even though test counts would indicate otherwise.
Test count predictions don’t seem worth doing, so going to stop doing those.
Prediction: 10.5% positive rate and 2,900 deaths per day. I’m being conservative because I worry about the drops from this week bei...
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