Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Covid 1/7: The Fire of a Thousand Suns, published by Zvi on the LessWrong. I’ll summarize everything up front. Might as well get on with it. Let’s do the numbers. The Numbers Predictions Prediction last week: 14.3% positive rate on 9.7 million tests, and an average of 2,500 deaths, again with wide error bars. Results: 16.4% positive rate on 9.3 million tests, and an average of 2,657 deaths. The phase shift on 12/30, in the wake of Christmas, seems to have been real, giving us the clear holiday bump we did not see from previous holidays. That was both the very bad outcome for infections I was worried about, and also not high on my list of things to be concerned or furious about this week. For deaths, my estimate was lower than it should have been and I should have assumed a full reversion, so on reflection it’s my mistake rather than especially bad news. The new strain is not yet prevalent enough to be noticeably impacting the numbers. Prediction: 17.0% positive rate on 9.5 million tests, and an average of 2,800 deaths. The holidays are over, there will be some fallout, with things getting slightly worse, but with the main boost in deaths from Christmas mostly coming later. Deaths Date WEST MIDWEST SOUTH NORTHEAST Oct 29-Nov 4 956 1977 2309 613 Nov 5-Nov 11 1089 2712 2535 870 Nov 12-Nov 18 1255 2934 2818 1127 Nov 19-Nov 25 1761 4169 3396 1714 Nov 26-Dec 2 1628 3814 2742 1939 Dec 3-Dec 9 2437 5508 4286 2744 Dec 10-Dec 16 3278 5324 4376 3541 Dec 17-Dec 23 3826 5158 5131 3772 Dec 24-Dec 30 3363 3668 4171 3640 Dec 31-Jan 6 5320 5036 6072 4986 This is the one place it’s not as bad as it looks. The data source for these numbers is Wikipedia, which shows a relatively large amount of shifting of deaths from last week into this week. If we assume that a lot of this week’s deaths were actually last week, that explains much of the increase. It’s not good news or anything, it’s definitely bad news, but it is not full on terrifying like it would be if we didn’t know about Christmas. We still should expect further increases in the next few weeks before the tide likely temporarily turns. Positive Test Percentages Percentages Northeast Midwest South West 11/5 to 11/11 5.56% 17.51% 9.89% 8.31% 11/12 to 11/18 6.99% 18.90% 11.64% 10.66% 11/19 to 11/25 7.00% 16.62% 10.41% 11.75% 11/26 to 12/2 8.38% 17.90% 12.45% 12.79% 12/3 to 12/9 10.47% 17.94% 13.70% 12.76% 12/10 to 12/16 10.15% 15.63% 15.91% 13.65% 12/17 to 12/23 9.88% 14.65% 15.78% 13.82% 12/24 to 12/30 10.65% 14.54% 17.07% 12.90% 12/31 to 1/6 12.18% 17.03% 19.69% 15.94% No way to sugar coat this one. Everything is pointed in the wrong direction in a clear phase shift. The good news is that it could be a one-time move from Christmas, and thus we can still plausibly expect things to remain stable from this point forward without waiting for further control systems to kick in. I hope to start seeing slow improvements soon, but I must admit that the overall graph is not as encouraging of that as I thought a few weeks ago, especially outside of the Midwest, and the turning point may be farther off than we’d like. The Midwest is still probably past its peak for this wave, even if everyone else has to wait a bit. Positive Tests Date WEST MIDWEST SOUTH NORTHEAST Nov 12-Nov 18 211,222 452,265 255,637 150,724 Nov 19-Nov 25 269,230 435,688 294,230 170,595 Nov 26-Dec 2 256,629 357,102 294,734 185,087 Dec 3-Dec 9 354,397 379,823 368,596 263,886 Dec 10-Dec 16 415,220 315,304 406,353 260,863 Dec 17-Dec 23 439,493 271,825 419,230 236,264 Dec 24-Dec 30 372,095 206,671 373,086 225,476 Dec 31-Jan 6 428,407 251,443 494,090 267,350 Test Counts Date USA tests Positive % NY tests Positive % Cumulative Positives Nov 5-Nov 11 8,290,417 10.8% 1,059,559 2.4% 3.16% Nov 12-Nov 18 9,040,426 12.4% 1,155,670 2.9% 3.50% Nov 19-Nov 25 10,419,059 11.8% 1,373,751 2.9% ...