@NYTGames why is the wordlebot so inconsistent? My wife and I do wordle together in our phones each night and get insanely different evaluations.

Likewise, if we look at the number of days counties spent under mandates over the period covered by a CDC data set (April 2020-Aug 2021), you see a less pronounced, but statistically significant, reduction of 1.3 deaths per 100,000 for every 10 days a mandate was in place.(11/14)

He also states that "when you look at the data on mask-wearing...you struggle to see any patterns". However, a crude look at county deaths per 100k from Jan 2021 to March 2022 shows a reduction of 19 deaths per 100,000 (95% CI 23,16) per 10% increase in reported masking (10/14)

The effect was modest, but significant, for student masking (~10% reduction), but teacher masking was the most effective mitigation measure examined (~20% reduction) (3/14)

During the projection period (Jan 15 to Apr 2, 2022), we expect 252,000-2,360,00 cumulative hospitalizations in the US and 16,000-98,000 cumulative deaths in the low immune escape/optimistic severity scenario. There are variations in cumulative estimates between scenarios (4/7)

At the end of projection period in early April 2022, incident hospitalizations and cases are projected to drop to low levels (such as those seen in mid-Summery 2021) assuming no new immune escape variant. (3/7)

The big question on everyone's mind is "when will the omicron wave peak". Across scenarios, the average projected peak time across models is this week or the next. Several states are projected to have later peaks, none later than mid-February. (2/7)

Substantial uncertainty remains about where the Omicron wave is going. Notably, severity in different sub-populations is still unclear and these projections did not account for a possible reduction in the generation time of Omicron compared to Delta. (7/9)

(4) Nationally during the projection period (December 19, 2021 to March 12, 2022) we expect to see between 391,000-2,040,000 cumulative hospitalizations and 44,000-298,000 deaths. (6/9)

(2) Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths will likely have receded substantially from the peak by the end of the projection period (March 12, 2022) but are projected to remain elevated compared to June 2021 (the lowest levels seen in the pandemic so far). (4/9)

Key takeaways: (1) The Omicron wave is projected to be sharp and fast in all scenarios, with most models projecting both cases and hospitalizations to peak before the end of January 2022 in every state (all models project peaks before the end of February 2022) (3/9)