Our Coming Winter of Discontent

 I try really hard to stay out of the prognostication business, and focus strictly on analysis. I think there's more than enough value in trying to figure out what's presently going on in the DC area, rather than try to guess at things at get it wrong. My (silly in hindsight) assessment back in April the regional peak had been reached is proof of that.

However, looking at the chart of new daily cases, which I called as a second wave back on November 10th, I feel really compelled to offer some sort of outlook on it.

I've already said verbatim, if we expect this wave to be similar to the first, we can expect it to subside by mid-January 2021. However, we may already be beyond that point.

I present to you a chart of the seven-day moving average of new infections. The advantage of this chart, is that it is a bit "smoother" than the day-to-day increases you typically see on here. It reduces the importance of spikes in the data, which are sometimes artifacts of day-of-the-week (Sunday in particular) and then also how the departments of health tabulate and update their data.










As you can see, the moving average for this peak has already eclipsed the first one, with no real sign of tapering-off. Bear in mind that it was about 2 months - March to May - to reach the first peak, so we may be looking at a 2nd peak around January 2021, but with a considerably higher magnitude. Further, based on the slope of the curve of this peak, I suspect we may be in the infancy of this second wave.


A counter argument is to look at the magnitude - the first peak started effectively around zero, and hit a peak around 1,300. While this current peak is closer to 1,400 at its current level, it started around baseline of roughly 500 (the floor for much of the summer). So to grow in a similar magnitude, we'd need to see the peak of the current wave hit around 1,800 cases per day in the moving-average.


My own personal take is that this peak will last longer and be larger than the first one. 











Source of chart: CDC

I don't know how much we can look to history as a guide, but according to the CDC, the first wave of the 1918 influenza epidemic began in March; second wave, which started in the fall, was larger and more deadly (admittedly in terms of deaths). We shall see.



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