New IHME Projection increases vaccine effects by April 1
The December 10 IHME Projections to April 1 compared to last week’s increases lives saved by vaccines to 20,000 from 11,000. Total deaths to April 1 also decrease by 37,000 to 502,000, a half a million. Deaths by January 20 decrease by 27,000 to 380,000. As of December 7, the model estimates that 15% of Americans had been infected.
Currently, the US has reached 16 million confirmed infections, and 300,000 deaths.
US Covid-19 current deaths on Dec. 11 are 295,450. Projected deaths by April 1 in IHME are 502,256, which can be lowered to 446,434, saving 55,822 lives by 95% or full masking. With current deaths, that is 206,806 more to go, so 27% can be saved by full masking. The projected deaths are a 70% increase over current deaths.
On Dec. 11, the FDA recommended the Pfizer vaccine for emergency usage, and on Dec. 12, the CDC Advisory Committee recommended distribution.
With rapid vaccine distribution, the IHME model has 482,879 lives lost by April 1, saving 19,377 lives, or 9.4%. So in the next three and a half months, 27% or three times as many lives can be saved by masking starting now, than will be saved by the vaccines being distributed over that time. The months of vaccine testing did not detect people who were vaccinated and infected but asymptomatic, and still capable of spreading the vaccine for a time. So even the vaccinated should continue masking until that is resolved. Also, after only the first dose, the vaccine was only 50% effective until the second dose, plus a week for it to take effect.
By April 1, they modeled 98.5 million being vaccinated. They also claim that there is a faster scale-up possible which could vaccinate 229 million by then. Despite the estimate in the past paragraph from their graphs, in a writeup, they state that 25,200 lives can be save by vaccine rollout, and 44,500 with the faster scale up. If the vaccines are targeted to only the higher risk people, which they mostly are, lives saved can be 49,900. Even that is below the 55,822 that can be saved by full masking, or, of course, by a combination of the two.
The projections for January 20, the change of administrations, is 380,448 deaths, which is 84,998 more than currently on December 11, and increase of 29%. With full masking, total deaths can be reduced to 367,562, saving 12,886 lives, which is 15% of those to go. With vaccine distribution, only 19 lives are expected to be saved by January 20th.
Current deaths per day oscillate between 2,000 and over 3,000, covering the range from Pearl Harbor (2,400) and Sept. 11 (2,900). Deaths per day in the IHME model are expected to peak around January 18, three weeks after the holidays, at 2,457, which can be reduced to 1,696 saving 761 lives per day with full masking, or 31% or a third. Only 3 deaths per day are projected to be saved by vaccines on January 18. Vaccine deaths per day are not reduced to those of ones with full masking until March 11.
By April 1, deaths per day are reduced to 688, but with vaccines will be 363, and with full masking only, 483.
We are awaiting for the Congress and President to conclude a Covid support bill, which will include $6 billion for costs of vaccine distribution.
IHME estimations of current deaths per day (December 11) are 421,807, compared to confirmed ones on a seven day average of 210,448 per day. The ratio of estimated to confirmed currently is 2.0. In a writeup with graphs, they show a that current confirmed infections are only 27%, leading to a ratio of 3.7.
Estimated infections per day will peak around January 7, one week after the holidays, at 439,593 per day, which could be reduced to 287,685 a day with full masking, saving 151,908 infections per day, or 34.5% or a third. With the vaccine that early, only 838 infections a day would be saved.
During the projection period, 48 states are expected to see high or extreme stress on ICU beds.
