2022 predictions
It’s always easier to play Monday morning quarterback than it is to be a decision maker.
When you’re making decisions, especially medical or public decisions, you often have to do so with incomplete data - this means your lack of clarity creates uncertainty about your assumptions, which naturally makes forecasting incredibly difficult.
Since I spend a lot of time in my newsletter with critiques about the decision-making of our public health officials, I think it’s only fair to make some predictions of my own so that I can be held up to scrutiny based on my underlying assumptions.
This newsletter installment is going to be lighter on the data and heavier on my guess about what’s going to happen in the coming year.
I wish I had come up with this idea on my own, but in truth I stole it from Matt Yglesias. Part of a high quality forecasting process requires making verifiable and quantitative predictions that we can look back on and evaluate whether they were right or not.
We’ll do some COVID and some non-COVID, and at the end of 2022, I’ll look back at these predictions and we’ll see how I did.
I’ll also include my confidence in the forecast with each prediction in parentheses.
Predictions on COVID
COVID will not be eradicated and will still be circulating by the end of 2022 (95% confident)
The Omicron wave will peak in New York City before the end of January (70% confident)
Omicron will have varying peaks nationwide throughout the next couple of months, but by the end of April will be on its way out across the United States (60% confident)
There will be at least one new COVID strain identified as a variant of concern by the end of the year (50% confident)
The media will still be reporting case numbers by the end of the year (90% confident)
Cases will continue to decouple from hospitalizations and deaths (60% confident)
Less than 200 Americans will be dying each day from COVID by the end of 2022 (50% confident)
A 4th COVID vaccine (an additional booster) will be recommended for Americans at high risk of serious illness (60% confident)
The mRNA boosters will have the same formulation as they current have, rather than a new genetic sequence engineered to specifically combat a new variant (50% confident)
Some version of mask mandates will still be in place by the end of the year for air travel and in some (probably blue) states (70% confident)
Kids will still be masked in school (50% confident)
There will still be absolutely zero good evidence that masks reduce COVID transmission or risk of serious disease in children (80% confident)
Paxlovid will remain in short supply throughout the year (70% confident)
Nothing will be done to reform the function of the FDA and CDC with regards to speeding up approvals in an emergency or improving our shoddy data collection capabilities (95% confident)
Non-COVID medical predictions
The obesity rate in America will continue to increase (90% confident)
The fastest growing prescription drug class will be SGLT2 inhibitors (50% confident)
At least one drug with a multibillion dollar market will be approved by the FDA without data demonstrating that it is safe and effective (80% confident)
The Roche Alzheimer’s drug gantenerumab will prove ineffective in a clinical trial (50% confident)
There will be at least one additional high quality clinical trial data published demonstrating the safety and efficacy of psychedelic therapy for depression (50% confident)
Telehealth use will increase without any impact on overall health spending, outcomes, or any significant clinical impact (90% confident)
My old boss, Mehmet Oz, will win his election to the US Senate (50% confident)
No professional society will add a polypill for cardiovascular disease prevention or a salt substitute for stroke reduction to their official guidelines even though there’s great evidence for both (90% confident)
Deaths from opiates will tragically continue to rise (90% confident)
Narcan will be available without a prescription nationwide by the end of the year (50% confident)
US healthcare spending will rise (95% confident)
Non-COVID, non-medical predictions
Bitcoin will cross $100,000 at some point, not necessarily ending the year there (40% confident)
The Brooklyn Nets will win the NBA title (20% confident)
Tom Brady will not retire in 2022 (70% confident)
Pivoting to the metaverse will end up being a good business decision for Facebook AKA Meta and their stock price will end 2022 higher than it ended 2021 (50% confident)
There will be zero mass market lab grown meat products available in 2022 (90% confident)
Some amorphous and non-verifiable predictions
The huge numbers of people dealing with “long COVID” will lead to more widespread and mainstream recognition of the potentially debilitating spectrum of post-infectious chronic disease
Ongoing promise with CRISPR technology both for correcting genetic diseases and for “improving” non-pathologic conditions
Trust in the FDA and the CDC will continue to wane and their reputations will be worse at the end of the year
The evidence will continue to mount that school closing and mask wearing for kids were terrible policy decisions that caused a huge amount of potentially irreparable harm to the members of society least able to advocate for themselves
I’ll look forward to feedback from readers about what sounds plausible and what sounds crazy. We’ll see how I did at the end of the year.
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