COVID-19 May 05, 2020

There has been a fair amount of press about the predicted number of dead and revisions thereof.  The curve fitting that I've been doing has undergone changes with time as well.  During the early stages of the pandemic prior to much of any social distancing the model suggested deaths over 300,000.  On April 13, I revised that number down to 186,000.  Social distancing measures had started to kick in by that date.  Just a few days later, I was able to revise that number down to 120,000 as the curve flattening really kick in.  On April 24 I further revised the number to 100,000.  It's been there ever since.  In summary, before social distancing: 300,000+.  Since social distancing, about 100,000. 

The 60,000 number that was bantered around earlier last month was absurd.  It was never realistic. I wrote about that here http://freethoughtranch.blogspot.com/2020_04_23_archive.html.  When looking at the data, it was hard to understand how the numbers could be substantially less than 100,000. 

Looking at today's numbers, I may have to revise the total deaths down again very slightly.  That assumes the same conditions in the future as we've had in the recent past.  Clearly, that assumption is increasingly being violated.  As social distancing relaxes I expect the death rate to rise.  I haven't seen that happen yet.  What the data tells me though is that total deaths will be 100,000 if we maintain the strict policies that are currently in place.  If we lift most restrictions, we will set ourselves back on the exponential growth curve.  The data from early in the pandemic suggests that could result in many 100s of thousands more dead.  Policies in between these two will result in deaths that are in between.