This is a simple representation that captures the essence of the direction COVID-19 is taking in the US. The lines in the attached chart represent COVID-19 hospitalizations per 100 thousand people. The white line represents California. The orange line represents 18 Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states. The blue line represents the rest of the country. It's hard to overstate how quickly conditions in California have deteriorated. COVID-19 hospitalizations have quintupled s

Here are my current thoughts on trends in the COVID-19 pandemic. First thing is that I made some predictions early last month. Two unfortunately were accurate. Hospitalizations across the nation did double, and the the CDC was underestimating the number of near-term deaths. They still are. I was fortunately wrong on one count. I feared that hospitalizations would triple across the country. That's happened in a number of large states, but on a nationwide basis we haven't come

The CDC’s consensus estimate for near-term deaths from COVID-19 is an ongoing demonstration for why many corporate analytics projects fail to achieve their desired results. The estimate is derived by averaging the results of 35 models from respected institutions whose models are based on varying assumptions for things like social distancing. The estimates for the week ending January 2 range from 5k to well over 25k. Those results are depicted in the left-hand chart. Fr

Many political leaders frame their COVID-19 policies as a choice between lives and "business." Science and basic planning principles say this is a false choice. The policy arguments are meant to quell opposition by making economic considerations appear selfish and heartless. This is lazy thinking. There is considerable research on the impact on life expectancy of economic setbacks. As an example, a paper published in May, available at The National Institutes of Health'