4 ms·

It's been obvious that covid is seasonal for a long time now. The winter season is here, the covid wave is here. No need for complex math models. BTW, funny how

It's been obvious that covid is seasonal for a long time now. The winter season is here, the covid wave is here. No need for complex math models. BTW, funny how those models usually ignore seasonality, natural immunity or quarantine on symptoms, i.e. basic respiratory infectious disease common sense. Here's yours truly, cautioning that 'the coming winter risks being brutal', 58 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28700532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28700532

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detaro 5y ago
Country-specific predictions are a bit more detail than "covid is seasonal", and at least in the models relevant here percentage of people with immunity and (quarantine and other) policies obviously play a role. Are they perfect? No, but "models are pointless and only give trivial results" is too easy.
- angelzen 5y ago
  Do you happen to have 2 months old predictions of the models you find non-trivial? My sense is that this is weather vs. climate prediction. They may be able to do a somewhat reasonable job a few days ahead, but beyond that it's all about common sense, i.e. similar to the historical record, as limited as it may be. They probably constantly retrofit the models with current data, which makes it look like the models where accurate all along. Common sense can also work in the short term. E.g. Austria (and Netherlands) seem to have crested the cases wave [1], which I predicted a 3 days ago by looking at the death rates plateauing, and noticing that the same pattern happened in US southern states and BG/RO [2]. I wonder what said models were saying 3 days ago, if such models exist for AT/NL and if they happen to publish their historical predictions. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29334288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29334288 [2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&uniformYAxis=0&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Cases+and+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=DEU~AUT~NLD~ROU~BGR https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

detaro 5y ago

Country-specific predictions are a bit more detail than "covid is seasonal", and at least in the models relevant here percentage of people with immunity and (quarantine and other) policies obviously play a role. Are they perfect? No, but "models are pointless and only give trivial results" is too easy.

angelzen 5y ago
Do you happen to have 2 months old predictions of the models you find non-trivial? My sense is that this is weather vs. climate prediction. They may be able to do a somewhat reasonable job a few days ahead, but beyond that it's all about common sense, i.e. similar to the historical record, as limited as it may be. They probably constantly retrofit the models with current data, which makes it look like the models where accurate all along. Common sense can also work in the short term. E.g. Austria (and Netherlands) seem to have crested the cases wave [1], which I predicted a 3 days ago by looking at the death rates plateauing, and noticing that the same pattern happened in US southern states and BG/RO [2]. I wonder what said models were saying 3 days ago, if such models exist for AT/NL and if they happen to publish their historical predictions. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29334288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29334288 [2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&uniformYAxis=0&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Cases+and+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=DEU~AUT~NLD~ROU~BGR https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...