Nextbigfuture pointed out the brain dead forecast made 9 days ago for cumulative COVID deaths in the USA by Washington University IHME. They projected out one hundred days that total US COVID deaths would reach 947,622 by June 1, 2022. They had updated an older forecast made about a month before that was predicting about 934000 deaths by June 1, 2022. The last time they updated the weekend before the CDC would report more than 934000 deaths. The CDC today reports 947,882 deaths by the reporting up to Feb 28, 2022.
The CDC has the lowest cumulative COVID deaths count for major or popular COVID tracking sources. John Hopkins counts about 6000 more and Worldometers counts 976000. It is especially strange for Worldometers as Worldometers links to IHME for every country page.
UPDATE: CDC March 2, 2022 reports 952,000 cumulative US COVID deaths and IHME still projects on March 4, 2002 that they predict there will be 947,622 cumulative US COVID deaths by June 1, 2022.
Above is the IHME forecasts and tracking. You can see that it does not look like what has actually been happening.
IHME predicts that by April 4, 2022 the daily US COVID deaths will be between 64 and 109 and by May 29 the daily US COVID deaths will be between 10 and 30. The higher daily number is their forecast if nothing changes and is 10% less if everyone got a third dose of the vaccine and could be three times less of 80% of American used masks. Everything about these projections are ridiculous, already wrong and broken.
If IHME was right then the daily US COVID deaths would be 532-534 per day instead of 1800-2000 per day. The top and bottom of the IHME three scenarios only varies by less than 1% until March 8. Feb 12-Mar 8 IHME could see nothing making daily deaths worse or better.
IHME is putting no effort into fixing obviously broken forecasting models. IHME also took away any other alternative scenarios or all of their scenario models converged into what is wrong.
I think it is bad for anyone to plan responses to the Pandemic-endemic with extremely flawed forecasts. We have to look honestly and accurately at will happen even if it is bad news. It is not celebrating death. It is not hiding from the truth.
It is also trivial to look at what is happening in South Africa, UK and Denmark which are ahead of the US in the latest variants of the virus (Omicron and BA2) to get a better view of what will happen in the next two to three weeks. It is also easy to get a better assessment for the next two months.
Nextbigfuture also looked back at the 1920s for the post-1918 public health issues with post-pandemic flu as a model for post-pandemic COVID. There is no reason to expect average daily COVID death to drop below half of the average pandemic levels of COVID deaths during the summer of 2021 (the low point of the pandemic with widespread vaccination and a lull in COVID variants). For the US, the low point was 150-600 deaths per day.
SOURCES- CDC, Worldometers, John Hopkins, IHME
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Even if N95 masks are effective, what does it matter? There won't be enough masks for everyone, nor will they be able to be changed out at the required intervals. The reality is that cloth masks are what's available, and they're not useful for this (soon to be classified endemic) scourge.
No. No it is not. Try again with a working calculator.
The real answer is 100 times higher than your answer.
This article is not about what to do. I have other articles about that. This is about do not use information and forecasts that are completely wrong. If your experts forecast that Russia has only 2000 troops inside Ukraine instead of 150,000 and another 50k-100k close by then they will make even worse plans.
None of the policies impact COVID spread. Pretending to be safer does not make anyone safer. The virus is everywhere. Putting a padlock on your mailbox is meaningless when there are 1000 people occupying your house. No action will stop spread. Spread has happened. We can work on changing title 24 and getting HVAC systems with viral filters on private and public buildings. Make ventilation of buildings more like hospitals. but we have to make it not as energy-consuming. I had an article about putting filters on box fans. Reducing deaths means getting people healthier by losing weight and new medicine.
Thanks for the valuable comment Titus. I updated the article as bizarrely, IHME has made no attempt to correct the fairy tale that they published as a forecast.
About $100 billion per year now for vaccine makers in 2022. Up from $50 billion in 2021.
In the last two years they have trotted out "expert" after "expert" who have been wrong about every last thing. Literally everything they say is wrong or contradictory, such as Fauci saying masks work after saying they don't work.
Also of note, none of these "experts" follow their own advice. If the masks really save lives then why is Fauci ever out in public with no mask? I can suspend disbelief for 3 hours to get through a Star Trek movie, but I can't suspend disbelief for a 15 minute Fauci speech. What he says simply isn't believable.
Also anyone today saying "the science has changed". Only the political science has changed. You saw your own poll numbers.
What are you saying? Of course masks, lockdowns, and social distancing work. That's how we eradicated covid back early 2020 when everyone…
Oh.
No, what you say is false and, possibly, distorted by your political view.
1) No data indicate that the virus looks like a lab leak, the viral genome has been sequenced (see Dongwan et al on Cell 2020). The only claim of artificial origin is an opinion piece on the wall street journal by Quay and Muller who claim that since the sequence is unique it just be artificial. However this position Obviously Covid19 was clearly a member of the coronavirus family and genetic "uniqueness" does not mean artificiality (your genetic makeup is unique, so it is mine, it does not mean that we were made in a lab).
2) Even conceding that the virus escaped from a lab (which I don't) it does not mean that it was artificial or that there is some weird conspiracy theory behind it (please…): labs all around the world study dangerous pathogens all the time, this is how you find the molecular mechanism that you can target with therapies.
3) I have seen misinformation campaigns targeting Dr. Fauci, not the other way around.
4) Conspiracy theories assume that the whole scientific community is a friendly brotherhood. It is not. If an expert does a mistake there are dozens of associates/assistants ready to destroy him to free his position. Science improves disproving wrong science all the time. Who does not understand cries conspiracy, but their position has simply been already disproven (in the same ways as you do not need to discuss with a flat earther about geography).
Regards
People tend to disregard expert opinion because it has been tainted by political opinion before it arrives to them.
The political filter takes sound research and researchers, misunderstands and misquotes it, obfuscates uncertainties and alternative hypotheses, cherrypicks which experts and which facts are presented to the public.
The track record of public health experts is abyssmal. We've seen this movie before; e.g. with dietary advice regarding saturated fats. Which led to an explosion of sugar, seed oils and transfats; obesity and diabetes.
This has been especially severe and obvious with Covid-19, where experts in virology who early on said the virus looked like a lab leak where heavily censored and derided. A misinformation campaign championed by Fauci et al who potentially funded the research that created the virus which leaked. He also said masks don't work and shouldn't be used by the public, and had to admit the advice was a lie and based on preserving masks for health care.
Conspiracy theories that were heavily shadow-banned, "fact checked" and publically mocked have repeatedly become facts during this pandemic, sometimes just months later.
There is no more effective poison for public trust than to have politically appointed "experts" and censor public discourse.
Masks are not a single screen mesh, nor is the only mode of action direct impaction on the mask. The worst particle size for N95 masks is 3 micron, where they are ~95% efficient at capturing particles when properly fitted. That's much smaller than the holes in the mask. For particles larger than 3 micron impaction dominates and particles smaller than 3 micron are captured electrostatically.
It's also not true that inhaled virus is 1 micron across. Respiratory droplets containing the virus are larger than 1 nm even when dried ("droplet nuclei"). E.g. most of the droplets expelled by speech are in the 10-100 micron range. When the water in those droplets evaporates what remains is not a solitary virus particle, it's potentially multiple virus clumped toghether with whatever salt, protein and gunk was in the exhaled droplet.
“IF”, for the sake of argument, the CDC #’s are correct, and the US data are the only #’s that we deem believable:
~978,000 people have died from Covid related illness.
978,000
————— = .003%
320,000,000
3 people out of every 1,000 have died?
Which fairly begs the questions:
Age
Health
Gender
Race
Et , etc, etc.
A team of actuaries could parse this raw data and come up with a plan of exactly who should be protected.
Everyone else will most likely get sick, but they won’t die.
Does, have the CDC published the raw data from US only?
Edit:
For perspective.
More than 480,000 US deaths annually From tobacco smoking related deaths, so about 1/2 of Covid related deaths.
What you say is incorrect:
1) The virus does not pass through the pores because the virus is always embedded in water droplets expelled with your breath and the droplets are orders of magnitude bigger than the pores. A viral particle not embedded in water or a biofilm layer such as the one deposited by the skin when touching something is easily oxidized and becomes nonfunctional.
2) While it is documented that vaccinated can spread infections they do at a significantly lower rate as they are orders of magnitude less likely to get infected again and their viral title is orders of magnitude lower. Now (March 2022) the vast majority of infections occur from non-vaccinated to non-vaccinated.
3) Antiviral therapeutics are not magic, and they tend to be not gentle on the body, furthermore, they are also "leaky" and not effective in 100% of the cases. They can be very expensive too, way more expensive than vaccines.
4) You get into the tinfoil hat conspiracy mode stating that antivirals are getting suppressed and Malone ostracized. New antivirals are coming on the market (Paxlovid had been FDA approved in December). Please provide reputable sources for your claims and bear in mind that EVERY therapy/drug/vaccine has side effects.
You should see me try to repair a leaking or slightly burst pipe. The very best thing I have found is to turn off the water supply and call the plumber.
It cost me $300 on a long weekend during a long weekend "monsoon" recently, and was still the best thing I could have done.
As a medical generalist, I have to work quite hard to understand specialist research studies.
A very good example is Dr. Robert Malone's review of a paper on his Substack this week. I have seen peer reviews of a few Covid papers and understood the disingenuous presentation, but Dr. Malone gives you the structure.
I appreciate your paragraph on "Vaccines" but you must know that the typical protocols and safety technique developed over decades have been abandoned. Read the animal studies carefully. For a hint look for the Pfizer rat ovaries. There is also a fairly revealing mouse myocardium study with lovely gross and histological images.
For the past few months I have failed to be able to access my account on NBF, after an OS "Upgrade" so will have to comment anonymously.
Let me not be morbid – I predict zero war deaths in Ukraine. Is that useful?
Okay, for the sake of Rick C. below (who clearly has no medical training)
Masks: the holes in a typical N95 are 40 to 50 microns wide. Covid is around 1 micron. Therefore, masks are a 5 lane freeway for Covid. No protection at all!
All the Covid vaccines are known as "Leaky Vaccines" Rick. That means that any vaccinated individual is capable of spreading Covid to others. I have super immunity. I'm triple vaccinated and I already beat Delta before being vaccinated. Last week, though asymptomatic, I tested positive. Covid is here to stay. It hides in animal reservoirs, including human and non-human. Our only hope is in the emerging antiviral therapeutics Rick. And by the way, they are being suppressed by the CEC, National Institute of Health, and other medical organizations. How can we trust them when they are banning/canceling the creators of the mRNA vaccines, Like Dr. Malone? Malone has been trying to warn us about the hidden ill effects of the mRNA vaccines and they turned on him like rabid dogs. After all, there's a lot of money to still be made on them. Do you get it? Read up Rick. Brian is merely pointing out some sloppy statistics work, and rightly so.
I think your problem here, indeed the problem people have been having in general over the past 2 years, is using the word expert to refer to two completely different things.
Expert = "person who spends their life researching viruses and developing medical defences against them"
Expert = "person who acts to develop and release messages from governments and large media businesses which are, to be fair, informed by information that originates in the first sort of expert, but has been filtered through layers of bureaucracy and political spin before it's finally spoonfed to the public"
They are completely different people, with completely different aims, completely different methods, treat the "truth" in different ways and often have a totally different understanding of the situation.
Treating the 2nd sort as if they are the 1st sort leads to disappointment and disillusionment, and leads to people no longer trusting the 1st sort as if they were the 2nd sort.
I'm not understanding the point of this article. What do you propose to do since the authorities underestimated Covid deaths? Certain people have made it clear they won't wear masks, they won't stay away from other people and they won't get vaccines. Those actions will of course drive a higher death rate than being careful.
Your plumber is an expert in his job, so is your mechanic. The fact that you have a better superficial understanding of what plumbers and mechanics do, allows you to understand that they are somehow experts in their field. People tend to disregard expert opinions because they do not have the ability to understand that their own point of view on the matter might be so limited that they have no idea of what an expert in a certain field does. This is particularly true for science in general and virology/epidemiology in particular since many movies depict lethal infections in the most unrealistic ways.
Based on their experience, experts developed the vaccines and gave recommendations on the protocols to follow. Different organizations report data differently because it is indeed a complex issue and institutions that interface with different nations might have different standards in place because different nations are indeed different both in terms of demographics and health care systems.
The fact that people do not understand why systems are different does not mean that they are arbitrary, biased, or unmotivated.
I'd rather be accused of being morbid, than doing planning on the basis of crap models.
So you are complaining the predicted death figures are too low vs actual death figures? Isn’t that a little morbid in a way?
Ask Jed Rothwell.
He knows what to do, who to believe, who can and can’t be trusted, what data is relevant and what is twisted, turned and perverted to fit what political ideology.
There are no experts on Covid 19, we learn more and more everyday.
The ammo belt is getting better equipped with every passing hour, but we’re not out of the woods yet and precious few have and share any real data.
Be smart and safe
I would classify most COVID-related information put out by our government as, at the very least, tinged with politics in mind.
Additionally I still have yet to see any conclusive evidence of how this virus started. I have no dog in that fight. Whether it was natural or made in a Wuhan lab is not something I care about politically. I do think though that it should be pointed out that a lot of folks, including Fauci, had significant interest in promoting gain of function research. There's no doubt that he used his position to try and squelch any discussion that the Wuhan may have created this virus. No doubt he was terrified that he would be blamed for the outbreak, or that GoF might be halted. If there is even a slight chance that GoF may have caused this whole thing, even if miniscule, the right thing to do was acknowledge that and honestly consider the possibility. Instead he engaged in a campaign to squash free speech and smear his opponents. Disgusting. Even if he's right and this thing does turn out to be completely natural, no public official should engage in that kind of conduct.
Vaccinated person here. I'm much obliged to all the people that worked so hard to develop COVID vaccines in record time. They are heroes.
That said, what's clear to me after two years now of this pandemic is that the so called experts aren't really experts. No doubt they are well educated and experienced, but being human they have all the same flaws as the average person, including susceptibility to ego, ambition, and emotion. They should stop screaming about how we should "accept" their "science" and admit that much of what they say is based on political calculus and business decisions and not true objective science. This is evident in how different organizations are reporting different COVID stats. How each one counts is based on their subjective judgments regarding what is in their interest. No doubt that some of that subjectivity is based on how much funding they can get from the govt, or how it pays it off in other ways in terms of their careers, their investments, etc.