@jacjacatk posted:The IHME predictions have ended up being low at almost every turn. They projected Georgia cases at ~2900 on 6/30, they were a 1000 higher.
Might be related to the shenanigans Georgia's pulling with their data presentation. In Georgia, if you test positive today, your test is backdated to when you first had symptoms. Combined with regular testing lag they're running at least a 2 week lag (they claim a 14-day window, but numbers from prior to the window routinely get revised up).
This has the effect of making it always look like the number of cases is going down. Of Georgia's 3394 reported cases yesterday, only 92 have been "assigned" to 7/14. See for yourself, https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report
Where the orange curve intersects the 14-day window line is the closest real picture you're going to get without going back and creating your own graph from the daily reported numbers.
That mostly flat region throughout May is reflective of the relative caution people were taking after the open. I live here too, and it's pretty much business as usual most places now, with ~50% mask wearing inside public spaces.
That exponential curve that starts in mid-June or so hasn't really had time to fully populate the death rate, and I agree that the infections are skewing towards a population with a lower overall death rate as well, which is likely to bring the existing fatality rate down below it's current 2.5% here. The added speed with which infections are growing is likely to counteract that, though, and we'll have a much better idea which factor is more important in another 2-3 weeks.
Of course that's when schools open, and we put 1.7 million disease vectors in close quarters every day. With no mask requirements in most districts. On the plus side, of the 9000 children under 18 in Georgia who've been infected, only 1 has died so far, so that would only project out to 50-100 extra dead kids. Unless you include the college age kids, in which case the odds are more like 1 in 2000. That's 350k in the Georgia State system, don't know how many more in private schools.
I think it's all pretty much inevitable at this point, though. Two of my sons studied German in HS, anyway. Might come in handy down the road.
You had some rational thoughts in the beginning, and then in that second to last paragraph, it got really weird.