Reflections over the COVID Crisis

After 443 days, CA will reopen today. During that time, I gave 10 forecasts and made 100s of posts with lots of predictions. I thought I’d spend a few minutes reflecting on my experience as a forecaster during that time.

But before I do that, I just want to let you know that today’s reopening is due to the power of the vaccines. Below is the relation between current new COVID cases per day and the vaccination rate by state. There is a clear negative relation between case rate and vaccination rate.

So what did I learn over the last 15 months:

• Forecasting is just as much about psychology as it is about data. When things are good (Jan 2020) you need to ground people. When things are bad (Mar 2020), you have to remind people that good times will come again. This slide from March 2020 – even though economically things would get much worse – was about giving people confidence life will return to normal. And just as predicted, today it has.

• Good forecasting means you have to take risks and trust what your data and analysis show you. I put this slide in my Jan 2021 forecast. People were saying in the chat I was an idiot, and doing the public a disservice, etc. But ultimately, I was right.

• Getting things right is more about being lucky than good. I have been fortunate over the last 15 months to get most things right. In Jan 2020, I talked about black swan events and how they can cause things to happen no one can ever predict. I had no idea COVID was coming. I just got lucky.

• It’s ok to change your mind. In April 2020, I did some math and thought we’d reopen after Memorial day. I figured there was no way we’d reopen before that and let everyone get together and have a “super spreader” weekend. Well, ultimately we reopened May 1 in may places, which lead to us being closed most of the summer as Europe reopened.

• If you want to be famous, you need to say something crazy. That’s the only way you get a lot of attention in the era of social media. I’d rather be informative than famous.

Hopefully you have found some of the posts and forecasts helpful over the last 15 months. I haven’t enjoyed watching people get sick from COVID, being suck at home, watching people suffer economically, watch students not be able to celebrate graduations, or see children not go to school. I have enjoyed trying to help the community see the light at the end of the tunnel and hopefully make better investing and economic decisions.

Today is a day to celebrate. Go see some friends or family you haven’t seen in a long time. Enjoy the mall or a restaurant. Today is a day to appreciate what we as a group have overcome and enjoy your freedom once again!