Fun ety/epi fact: The "dem" in "pandemic" comes from Greek "demos" meaning "people".
Fortunately we have another good word "panzootic" to mean the equivalent in animals, as in "H5N1 is panzootic in birds". Indeed it is!

Are the "kids need to get infected with pathogens" folks in the room with you now?

This article from April 2022 discusses "Patients who develop ARDS typically end up on high flow oxygen, many need mechanical ventilator support, and many need extracorporeal membrane oxygenator (ECMO) support."

Thankfully that's extremely rare nowadays.

Huh, the headline has been changed to make more sense.

HMPV is endemic in Australia and the rest of the world. You probably didn't even notice the last wave of HMPV in Australia, which peaked in October.

Why would you want covid to be like flu? Flu peaks two and a half times higher than covid. If covid did that, hospitals would be swamped. Lucky it is more like rhinoviruses (less seasonal).

I think I would trust the ED surveillance as a quantitative measure.

The WW data shows a jump up at the same time, which corroborates the ED surveillance jump, but I wouldn't take the WW data as quantitative.

You're probably already aware, but the CDC has a really wonky way of calculating the "wastewater viral activity level". I don't think there's any guarantee it would be even close to proportional to infections, especially at the ends of the range.

www.cdc.gov/nwss/about-d...

I am really curious as to what sort of mathematical model you're using! Would love to understand how the peak could decrease by 40% but still occur on the same day. Seems odd. Is this based on a multi-variant SIRS model? If you've described it elsewhere, would appreciate a pointer to it. Cheers!

But surely correlation, not causation? 😉

Just to be clear, my central expectation is just one winter wave, peaking well after 1 January.

(But I wouldn't use the word "forecast" for any of this kind of spit-balling!)

I appreciate the broad prediction interval!

I find it interesting you (and many others, including those who claim "covid isn't seasonal") are still pegging the peak to 1 January.

(Personally, I think there *is* a fair amount of seasonal forcing, but I also expect a delayed peak this year.)

Can I ask how you're converting the wastewater numbers into infections per day? It looks fairly reasonable, but I wonder about whether it works to tell you quantitatively about the peak-to-trough variations. ED visits have fallen 5X but your blue curve about 4X and green curve about 3X.