Back in March, I came across this Jerusalem Post (Mar 20) article via someone who posted it on Facebook:
But on February 7, something changed. “The number of new infections started to drop linearly and did not stop," Levitt said. "A week later, the same happened with the number of the deaths. This dramatic change in the curve marked the median point and enabled better prediction of when the pandemic will end. Based on that, I concluded that the situation in all of China will improve within two weeks. And, indeed, now there are very few new infection cases.”
. . . In Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, the whole population theoretically was at risk of becoming infected, but only 3% were.
The Diamond Princess cruise ship represented the worst-case scenario in terms of disease spread, as the close confines of the ship offered optimal conditions for the virus to be passed among those aboard . . . “Those are extremely comfortable conditions for the virus and still, only 20% were infected. It is a lot, but pretty similar to the infection rate of the common flu,” Levitt said.
A few days later, the Los Angeles Times (Mar 23) also had their own article about Michael Levitt:
Three weeks later, Levitt told the China Daily News that the virus’ rate of growth had peaked. He predicted that the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in China would end up around 80,000, with about 3,250 deaths.
. . . In Iran, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases per day remained relatively flat last week, going from 1,053 last Monday to 1,028 on Sunday. Although that’s still a lot of new cases, Levitt said, the pattern suggests the outbreak there “is past the halfway mark.”
Third, did Michael Levitt just get lucky when it came to his China prediction? Notice that in the LA Times article (emphasis that this was dated March 23) he believed that Iran's outbreak was at the halfway mark. The first case hit Iran around February 19th (officially). If Iran was half way through the pandemic, that would indicate that Iran would get through the majority of the spread by the April/May time frame. Once again, if we look at Worldometer we know that Iran has had a steady number of confirmed daily cases all the way through August.
I think lockdown is a very crude, medieval-sounding phrase. I think closing schools, closing business and places of work is not such a great idea and causes huge damage to the economy. It’s wicked to people in the economy, because if you’re a gardener or you own a restaurant, you can’t work from home.
These people have been very badly hit. I think that the retail sector in the United States is not going to recover, which has been a great gift to Amazon.
It’s also very unfair to the younger people and to the disadvantaged people — people have not fully estimated some negative results of the lockdown. Suicides, for example, have increased dramatically in certain locations, along with marital abuse, child abuse and addiction. Tobacco use has increased very substantially, and that is going to end up killing people. If people smoke 5% more, it would result in much more deaths than all the COVID-19 deaths by far.
But on February 7, something changed. “The number of new infections started to drop linearly and did not stop," Levitt said. "A week later, the same happened with the number of the deaths. This dramatic change in the curve marked the median point and enabled better prediction of when the pandemic will end. Based on that, I concluded that the situation in all of China will improve within two weeks. And, indeed, now there are very few new infection cases.”
. . . In Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, the whole population theoretically was at risk of becoming infected, but only 3% were.
The Diamond Princess cruise ship represented the worst-case scenario in terms of disease spread, as the close confines of the ship offered optimal conditions for the virus to be passed among those aboard . . . “Those are extremely comfortable conditions for the virus and still, only 20% were infected. It is a lot, but pretty similar to the infection rate of the common flu,” Levitt said.
A few days later, the Los Angeles Times (Mar 23) also had their own article about Michael Levitt:
Three weeks later, Levitt told the China Daily News that the virus’ rate of growth had peaked. He predicted that the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in China would end up around 80,000, with about 3,250 deaths.
. . . In Iran, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases per day remained relatively flat last week, going from 1,053 last Monday to 1,028 on Sunday. Although that’s still a lot of new cases, Levitt said, the pattern suggests the outbreak there “is past the halfway mark.”
First, I'm not sure where he's coming up with the 3% if his forecast was that China would end up at around 80,000 cases. Wuhan has a population of 11 million so a 3% infection rate would be 330,000. He might be making an assumption on asymptomatic cases, which isn't being articulated in the article.
Second, In terms of the Jerusalem Post article, I protested on Facebook saying, "I think he's leaving out the fact that Wuhan went on a lock down -- where some people were locked into their homes by wood planks -- and only allowed to leave their homes twice a week. And the same can be said about the Diamond Princess where people weren't allowed out of their rooms. So I'm not sure we can have much confidence in his 3%/20% targets."
Okay, so admittedly, even in the United States, per Worldometer, we're no where near a 3% infection rate officially. Yet, we're way higher than the less than 0.1% infection rate in China. I would argue that are approximately 2% infection rate is probably more like 5%. But again, that is less than his upper bound of 20%. On the other hand, we've done some significant lock downs in the United States (not as significant as China did in Wuhan) so that helped stop the spread of the virus.
Third, did Michael Levitt just get lucky when it came to his China prediction? Notice that in the LA Times article (emphasis that this was dated March 23) he believed that Iran's outbreak was at the halfway mark. The first case hit Iran around February 19th (officially). If Iran was half way through the pandemic, that would indicate that Iran would get through the majority of the spread by the April/May time frame. Once again, if we look at Worldometer we know that Iran has had a steady number of confirmed daily cases all the way through August.
A more recent Q&A with Michael Levitt is up on Stanford Daily (Aug 2):
I think lockdown is a very crude, medieval-sounding phrase. I think closing schools, closing business and places of work is not such a great idea and causes huge damage to the economy. It’s wicked to people in the economy, because if you’re a gardener or you own a restaurant, you can’t work from home.
These people have been very badly hit. I think that the retail sector in the United States is not going to recover, which has been a great gift to Amazon.
It’s also very unfair to the younger people and to the disadvantaged people — people have not fully estimated some negative results of the lockdown. Suicides, for example, have increased dramatically in certain locations, along with marital abuse, child abuse and addiction. Tobacco use has increased very substantially, and that is going to end up killing people. If people smoke 5% more, it would result in much more deaths than all the COVID-19 deaths by far.
The impact on the economy is definitely something to consider. To me, I think it is clear that bars, music venues and sport stadiums are probably not places we want to have open and filled to capacity with people. I think it is highly likely that the 500,000 who headed out to the Los Angeles bars back in June helped cause a spike in cases. For the rest of the economy, I think we do need to discuss the trade-offs between the spread of the disease and the economic damage a lock down is causing.
And a prediction he made specific to the United States
I think it’s going to end up with less deaths than what I thought. In March, I thought there would be a total of 220,000, but there will be less than that. Right now it is around 155,000 in the U.S., and I am expecting it to end up under 170,000 or maybe 175,000.
He's wrong about the 175,000 as the US hit that number on August 18, which was 16 days after this article went to print. There has to be something wrong with his model, because a forecast shouldn't go wrong that quickly. I speculate in an upcoming blog post on why I think his model is off.
No comments:
Post a Comment