I could pretty easily imagine it being about the same on average, slightly lower, slightly higher, or a decent amount higher, if no major surprises (e.g., a new strain displacing Delta) happen.
A new strain did replace Delta.
In [California], I’d maybe put 2⁄3 probability on at least 85% of weeks being between 5000 official new cases per day and 80,000 official new cases per day, until November?
Looking at each Monday from Aug 23 through Nov 1 for what the NY Times says the weekly average was that day, I get:
Aug: 16k, 14k
Sep: 13k, 11k, 9k, 8k
Oct: 7k, 6k, 6k, 4k, 9k
By that accounting, 10⁄11 = ~91% of weeks were in the 5000 − 80,000 range.
And I’d separately predict with 70% probability the conjunction: (1) the average number of new Alameda County cases each day between Dec 15 and Jan 15 will be at least 1.5x the average number of cases in the last week of September
Average in the last week of September was ~7241. 1.5x that is ~10862. On Dec 15 new cases were only 5365, so my prediction is falsified. Dec 20 cases jumped from 3582 to 19084, so CA cases have been in the range I mentioned starting Dec 20 rather than Dec 15. (And I expected a climb to start in early November, like it did in 2020, rather than in late December—I mentioned ‘Dec 15’ because I expected this to give me more than enough buffer for seasonality effects to take over.)
and (2) this Dec 15 - Jan 15 average will be at least 50,000 cases per day.
Eyeballing the NYT graph, looks to me like the average was ~30k at the end of Dec, 50-60k first week of Jan, and 100k+ for most of Jan. (And again, with Omicron rather than Delta.)
Replacing ‘Alameda County’ with ‘California’:
A new strain did replace Delta.
Looking at each Monday from Aug 23 through Nov 1 for what the NY Times says the weekly average was that day, I get:
Aug: 16k, 14k
Sep: 13k, 11k, 9k, 8k
Oct: 7k, 6k, 6k, 4k, 9k
By that accounting, 10⁄11 = ~91% of weeks were in the 5000 − 80,000 range.
Average in the last week of September was ~7241. 1.5x that is ~10862. On Dec 15 new cases were only 5365, so my prediction is falsified. Dec 20 cases jumped from 3582 to 19084, so CA cases have been in the range I mentioned starting Dec 20 rather than Dec 15. (And I expected a climb to start in early November, like it did in 2020, rather than in late December—I mentioned ‘Dec 15’ because I expected this to give me more than enough buffer for seasonality effects to take over.)
Eyeballing the NYT graph, looks to me like the average was ~30k at the end of Dec, 50-60k first week of Jan, and 100k+ for most of Jan. (And again, with Omicron rather than Delta.)