Coronavirus: 534,000 plus deaths by April 1, 2021?

Back on September 10th, I wrote a blog post where I totally didn't buy the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington forecast that 410,000 Americans would die from COVID-19 by the end of December 31st, 2020. As I write this on December 24th, US deaths are at 337,000 per Worldometer. I can say with certainty that we won't get to 410,451 by Jan 1st. To get there, daily deaths would have to average over 10,000 per day until December 31st. The seven day average at the moment is 2,752. We'll likely end up at deaths between 355,000 and 360,000. To me, that's a relatively big miss. Back in September, they were expecting about 217,000 additional deaths. Let's say we come in with around 163,000 additional deaths. That's a 25% forecast miss.

Per CNN via WMBF (Dec 24), IHME has come up with another forecast. This one is for April 1st:

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation released new pandemic models that show the possibility of U.S deaths topping 567,000 by April 1.

The group also found that deaths could skyrocket to 731,000 over the same time period if states ease-up on pandemic mandates.

Researchers also say more than 33,000 lives could be saved by expected vaccine distributions.

So their low end is 534,000 with the assumption that vaccines get distributed. Their baseline is 567,000. Their high end is 731,000. As vaccines are getting distributed, what do I think of their low end projection of 534,000.

Once again, per Worldometer, as of December 24th, deaths are at 337,000 (as the final data isn't in as I write this, maybe deaths edge up to 338,000. To get to 534,000 total deaths, the US would average around 2,031 deaths per day.

I think they're in the ballpark on this one though I do think they're on the high end. Today is Christmas Eve. Tomorrow is Christmas. New Year's Eve is just around the corner. There are going to be some significant travel and parties going on. As mentioned above, the current 7-day rolling average of daily deaths is at 2,752. I could see that continuing through much of January before going through a steady decline. I would say they get within 10% - 15% of their incremental death forecast. Basically, I think this forecast is far more realistic than the September forecast.

I'll obviously follow up with this when we get close to that date or soon thereafter.

As with the IHME, the caveat to this is that the vaccine roll-out continues.