IMO The title is overly dramatic and seems to claim that the news about the new strain is more significant than I actually think it is in terms of how much it should cause us to update our views of what infection risk and US COVID-19 deaths will be in 2021.
In this post Zvi doesn’t try to forecast how many infections/cases/deaths there would be in the US without this new strain (unless I missed it… it is a long post). Yet he really should, because doing so will lead one to realize that the US is likely going to be at or close to herd immunity by ~May-June anyway, so a new transmissible strain that becomes dominant in the US around that same period can’t plausibly make as huge of a difference as Zvi seems to be saying in this post.
Good Judgment’s median estimate for “How many total cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. will be estimated as of 31 March 2021?” is ~130M currently. And Good Judgment’s median estimate for “When will enough doses of FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine(s) to inoculate 100 million people be distributed in the United States?” is ~May 1st currently. https://goodjudgment.io/covid/dashboard/
Assuming that 20% of vaccines go to people who had already been infected, this would mean that by May, approximately ~220M people (220M = ~140M + 0.8*100M) the US will be immune, or about 66% of the population. This could easily be higher or lower, but the point is that we’re going to be at or close to herd immunity by the time Zvi says this new viral strain would start becoming dominant in the US.
In short, the news would be much worse if this new viral strain had spread to the degree that it has now several months ago. But in reality, I think we’ll be at or close to herd immunity already by the time it becomes prominent, so it won’t make that much of a difference.
EDIT: I misread Zvi’s piece initially and mistakenly thought he wrote that that the new strain wouldn’t become dominant in the US until May. I now see that he says “Instead of that being the final peak and things only improving after that, we now face a potential fourth wave, likely cresting between March and May, that could be sufficiently powerful to substantially overshoot herd immunity.” Taking this view as true instead makes me see the new strain as significantly worse news: specifically, this two-month shift might be sufficient to make an additional ~10-15% of the population get infected/sick before herd immunity is reached. (I still think the post title is overblown, but still this is a significant update for me.)
My 8-months-ago self would be surprised to learn that the US average COVID-19 deaths/day has risen again to 1,300 deaths/day. I don’t understand why this happened. Does anyone know? Is it a combination of vaccine and/or natural immunity not lasting? Or is it that there are still a lot of unvaccinated people? Or were my estimates of how many Americans had been infected so far too high?
IMO The title is overly dramatic and seems to claim that the news about the new strain is more significant than I actually think it is in terms of how much it should cause us to update our views of what infection risk and US COVID-19 deaths will be in 2021.
In this post Zvi doesn’t try to forecast how many infections/cases/deaths there would be in the US without this new strain (unless I missed it… it is a long post). Yet he really should, because doing so will lead one to realize that the US is likely going to be at or close to herd immunity by ~May-June anyway, so a new transmissible strain that becomes dominant in the US around that same period can’t plausibly make as huge of a difference as Zvi seems to be saying in this post.
Good Judgment’s median estimate for “How many total cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. will be estimated as of 31 March 2021?” is ~130M currently. And Good Judgment’s median estimate for “When will enough doses of FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine(s) to inoculate 100 million people be distributed in the United States?” is ~May 1st currently. https://goodjudgment.io/covid/dashboard/
Assuming that 20% of vaccines go to people who had already been infected, this would mean that by May, approximately ~220M people (220M = ~140M + 0.8*100M) the US will be immune, or about 66% of the population. This could easily be higher or lower, but the point is that we’re going to be at or close to herd immunity by the time Zvi says this new viral strain would start becoming dominant in the US.
In short, the news would be much worse if this new viral strain had spread to the degree that it has now several months ago. But in reality, I think we’ll be at or close to herd immunity already by the time it becomes prominent, so it won’t make that much of a difference.
EDIT: I misread Zvi’s piece initially and mistakenly thought he wrote that that the new strain wouldn’t become dominant in the US until May. I now see that he says “Instead of that being the final peak and things only improving after that, we now face a potential fourth wave, likely cresting between March and May, that could be sufficiently powerful to substantially overshoot herd immunity.” Taking this view as true instead makes me see the new strain as significantly worse news: specifically, this two-month shift might be sufficient to make an additional ~10-15% of the population get infected/sick before herd immunity is reached. (I still think the post title is overblown, but still this is a significant update for me.)
My 8-months-ago self would be surprised to learn that the US average COVID-19 deaths/day has risen again to 1,300 deaths/day. I don’t understand why this happened. Does anyone know? Is it a combination of vaccine and/or natural immunity not lasting? Or is it that there are still a lot of unvaccinated people? Or were my estimates of how many Americans had been infected so far too high?
Don’t forget Delta.
Right, not sure how that escaped my mind.
Some of my thoughts that lead me to think this are in my comments on this Metaculus question: https://pandemic.metaculus.com/questions/3988/how-many-total-deaths-in-the-us-will-be-directly-attributed-to-covid-19-in-2021/