COVID-19 short-term forecasts Deaths 2020-03-24

[2020-03-24] Our forecasts are starting to overestimate in some cases. This was always expected to happen when the increase starts to slow down. We have started to add forecasts that are based on what happened in China earlier this year, but only for Italy and Spain sofar.
[2020-03-26] We are in the process of updating our forecasts to reflect China's experience in a more coherent manner. This is shown for Italy only, and will require further development.
[2020-03-29] Now including some US States, based on New York Times data.

• We believe these forecasts fill a useful gap in the short run. They give an indication of what is likely to happen in the next few days, removing some aspect of surprise. Moreover, a noticeable drop in comparison to the extrapolations could be an indication that the implemented policies are having some impact. It is difficult to understand exponential growth. We hope that these forecasts may help to convince viewers to adhere to the policies implemented by their respective governments, and keep all arguments factual and measured.
• We use the data repository for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Visual Dashboard operated by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. This is updated daily, but it seems that our forecasts need slightly less frequent updating.
  US state data as of 2020-03-28 is courtesy of the New York Times. This seems to be a day behind the Johns Hopkins data.
• We can only provide forecasts of what is measured. If confirmed cases are an underestimate of actual cases, then our forecasts will also be underestimates. Again: no other epidemiological data is used.
• We will probably revise or update the methodology as we learn what is happening in the next few days or weeks.
• Once the number of cases levels off, there is no need to provide these forecasts anymore.
• Countries where the counts are very low or stable have been omitted.
• We will probably revise or update the methodology as we learn what is happening in the next few days or weeks.
• Once the number of cases levels off, there is no need to provide these forecasts anymore.
• Countries where the counts are very low or stable have been omitted.
• The graphs have dates on the horizontal axis (yyyy-mm-dd) and cumulative counts on the vertical axis. They show
  1. bold dark grey line (with circles): observed counts (Johns Hopkins CSSE);
  2. many light grey lines (with open circles): forecasts using different model settings and starting up to four periods back;
  3. red line (with open circles): single forecasts path using default model settings;
  4. black line (with crosses): average of all forecasts, recentered on the last observation;
  5. thin green lines: some indication of uncertainty around the red forecasts, but we do not know how reliable that is.
  Both the red line forecasts and the black lines are also given in the tables above. These forecasts differ, we are currently inclined to use the average forecasts.
• The forecasts are constructed as follows:
  1. An overall `trend' is extracted by taking a window of the data at a time. In each window we draw `straight lines' which are selected using an automatic econometric procedure (`machine learning'). All straight lines are collected and averaged, giving the trend.
  2. Forecasts are made using the estimated trend, but we note that this must be done carefully, because simply extrapolating the flexible insample trend would lead to wildly fluctuating forecast. We use the `Cardt' method, which has been found to work well in other settings.
  3. Residuals from the trend are also forecasted, and combined with trend forecasts into an overall forecast.
• EU-BS is Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania together.
• This paper describes the methodology and gives further references, but is still preliminary.