Alan,Here's a nice modelling study (Univ. Washington) cited in my local paper (LA Times):
Forecasting COVID-19 impact on hospital bed-days, ICU-days, ventilator days and deaths by US state in the next 4 months
No differential equations, just fitting a sigmoidal-type (actually a CumNormal) to the cumulative death rate, particularized to the local details of each US state. A 4-page Appendix gives the details, and there are online visualizations of all the projections. I like the wide error bands! It all sounds rather plausible.
Here's a link to the state-by-state projections and one for the country as a whole. Total projected US deaths from COVID-19: (38,000 - 162,000), with new daily deaths peaking around Easter, and with the (current) episode essentially over by June 1.
California projections: 800 - 17,000 deaths, with new daily deaths peaking around the last week of April.
A point of comparison for the US total is the CDC estimate of 26,000 - 53,000 US deaths for seasonal flu (2018-2019 season). Preliminary estimates for the 2019-2020 season are similar. So, another way to frame the UW COVID-19 projection is that, under the current lockdown policies, we'll have a multiplier of 1.5x - 3x deaths on top of recent seasonal flu deaths.
Why? Better at what?Logistic function better. Or an asymmetrical version of it.
Alan,
Are you still enthusiastic about this IHME. Some say it is completely useless.
The logistic function comes out of many math biol models (as well as other fields), including some epid. models. Or it's at least a decent approximation to what comes out of these models. So it's not unreasonable to fit that function. By "asymmetrical" I just mean that the basic logistic function doesn't capture the asymmetry in the growth and decay phrases of an epidemic. Hence needing a slightly more general function for fitting.Why? Better at what?Logistic function better. Or an asymmetrical version of it.
Nothing special about this function, meiner meinung nach.
I think a big problem is that there is no one(?) in Congress with STEM degree. So, being comfortable with numbers is non-existent.
Alan,
Are you still enthusiastic about this IHME. Some say it is completely useless.
So, weighing all of the above: yes,-- I am still a big fan.
Well, not exactly. The STEM people make up around 10% of Congress. Still not a lot.I think a big problem is that there is no one(?) in Congress with STEM degree. So, being comfortable with numbers is non-existent.
Alan,
Are you still enthusiastic about this IHME. Some say it is completely useless.
So, weighing all of the above: yes,-- I am still a big fan.
Same with leaders who studied Greek and the Classics.
So, how do they link cause and effect?
The consequences are dire: it means software projects will fail (what's new) because of politics, lack of right people on the team (from requirements analyst and beyond) and lack of expertise on all fronts.
A counterexample: I was chief architect of the largest social services projects in NL in1990. We had a very small core team and we were quarantined from external noise. The project was a success mainly because of this fact. We fired our first project leader and replaced him by one who wanted to get the job done, and he lived up to his promise.
These days, government projects are horror stories.