General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUniversity Of Washington Models Predict 72,433 Total Deaths By August
How many people are likely to die in the United States of Covid-19? How many hospital beds is the country going to need? When will case numbers peak? To answer those questions, many hospital planners, media outlets, and government bodies including the White House relied heavily on one particular model out of the many that have been published in the past two months: the University of Washingtons Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
The model first estimated in late March that thered be fewer than 161,000 deaths total in the US; in early April, it revised its projections to say the total death toll through August was projected to be 60,415 (though it acknowledged the range could be between 31,221 and 126,703). The model has been cited often by the White House and has informed its policymaking. But it may have led the administration astray: The IHME has consistently forecast many fewer deaths than most other models, largely because the IHME model projects that deaths will decline rapidly after the peak an assumption that has not been borne out.
On Wednesday, the US death count passed the 60,000 mark that the IHME model had said was the likely total cumulative death toll. The IHME on April 29 released a new update raising its estimates for total deaths to 72,433, but that, too, looks likely to be proved an underestimate as soon as next week. Even its upper bound on deaths now listed as 114,228 by August is questionable, as some other models expect the US will hit that milestone by the end of May, and most project it will in June.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/5/2/21241261/coronavirus-modeling-us-deaths-ihme-pandemic
Squinch
(50,955 posts)Buckeye_Democrat
(14,855 posts)Problems with that model were mentioned by epidemiologists weeks ago.
Its overly-optimistic, so the Trump team pushed it.
SoonerPride
(12,286 posts)And it only picked by the trumplethinskin administration because of the exceedingly optimistic forecasts
It is literal garbage
sfstaxprep
(9,998 posts)Based on the trend WITH the shutdowns, I still think we'll hit 100K by my birthday.
With the push to start opening up in various parts of the country, I think there is now Zero doubt about that, and we may easily hit 100K several days before the 23rd.
Volaris
(10,272 posts)The school year starts in fall. Lovley.
How many bodies will it take, before america is great again?
tblue37
(65,408 posts)patphil
(6,182 posts)If that continues until August 1st, that would add 145,000 deaths to the 66,000 we have now.
That's 211,000.
Even if we go down to 1,000 deaths per day, we are at 156,000 by August !st.
To come in at 114,000 we have to go down to close to 500 deaths per day, and that's an average over the 90 days.
I doubt it will drop of that far, given the push to open things up again.
I see no reason to expect the toll will be that low; probably at or above the 156,000 number.
Of course, I'm just looking at the situation and taking a guess...could be less, but I doubt it.
OrlandoDem2
(2,065 posts)Buckeye_Democrat
(14,855 posts)It projects between 100,000 and 300,000 deaths by August (97.5% confidence interval) with an expectation of about 168,000.
Edit: It also indicates a current 2.9% overall infection rate (including recoveries) in the USA, which is FAR from herd immunity levels of 60%+. In other words, this will likely last awhile without a vaccine.
patphil
(6,182 posts)Roland99
(53,342 posts)Nevilledog
(51,122 posts)kentuck
(111,103 posts)Those numbers seem quite conservative.
coti
(4,612 posts)TheBlackAdder
(28,209 posts)coti
(4,612 posts)NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)Georgia, Florida, and all the red states are about to explode. They are celebrating that they've beat the libs and are "free" to run around licking doorknobs and shit
If you can, stay inside for another month. By then, they'll lock us back down again.
sfstaxprep
(9,998 posts)Because of those Fuckers opening up, the rest of us are going to continue suffering.
Loki Liesmith
(4,602 posts)We are at 66K today.
IHME looked better two weeks ago but its clear that we dont know enough about this disease to
model it well yet.
Crunchy Frog
(26,587 posts)And that's just the official, confirmed fatalities. The true numbers are likely considerably higher, which would mean that we're already past that "estimate".
The "official" numbers will be there within days.
This "model" seems pretty worthless to me.
Marrah_Goodman
(1,586 posts)LisaL
(44,973 posts)We are already at 66,000. In 3-4 days we can easily hit 72,000.