The Minnesota Department of Health is a State of Minnesota agency that operates programs for disease prevention and control, health promotion, family and community health, environmental health, health care policy, and regulation of health care providers and facilities.
Am very concerned about the graphs around 37:00 in the video. It almost appears that MDH and the MN modellers are suggesting to people that after about 200 days out from March (ie end of Sept) there will be no Fall spike (a la Spanish flu 1918) to worry about and "Mn will be in the clear". Such a deduction is just dangerous. The dreaded Fall spike possibility is scenario #2 in the CIDRAP Report by Michael Osterholm, et al (cf. also Fauci, et al). Even CIDRAP scenario #1 has successive spikes throughout Sept -- July 2021. I just wonder if the SIRE modelling done here has taken proper account of abrupt changes in R0 due to beautiful summer weather and asymptomatic transmission [and, e.g., statements by the governor]. It is completely clear mathematically that abrupt jumps in the 'de facto' R0 can create resurgent spikes.... quite different than the graphs shown in the Q+A. MDH should make sure a false conclusion is not drawn from this work! (I am a professor of mathematics at UM.)
As they state in the video, they are aware of these possibilities, but felt that they could not model hypotheticals. There isn't enough hard data to support a model that shows a summer tapering-off or other surprise shifts in rt in a way that reliably reflects anything like reality. You're right, of course, that these are possibilities that the government, and the public generally, should be aware of. But I tend to agree with them that they are not possibilities that can be very helpfully modeled here. Sincerely, James Heaney Some guy on the internet with no real credentials to speak of
Can you square this for me? Mid April there were 100 COVID patients in an ICU status with approx. 1,800 confirmed cases. A month later there are 200 COVID patients in ICU with 13,000 confirmed cases. With more testing the relationship between positive cases and ICU cases is likely to drop. How are you projecting an increase to 3,600 cases over the next 8 weeks?
Can we see a modeling out until just August 1st? Many other models like the IHME model go until this date. It would be helpful to compare models to see that. Thanks.
Thank you to all who have contributed to this model! As an analyst accustomed to building models in Excel, I have some sense of what’s entailed in building something logical and robust, as this certainly appears to be.
