[This](https://www.ft.com/content/a2e0340c-fe7b-4d89-aea5-e07ff84b20fb) article out today in the Financial Times is a nice round-up of what the US IC currently thinks: > - US military and intelligence officials believe that Russia is planning to hold a big nuclear weapons exercise this month as a warning to Nato not to intervene if President Vladimir Putin decides to invade Ukraine. - The US believes that the optimum time for a Russian invasion would be from mid-February to the end of March. - The US has not determined if Putin has decided to invade Ukr...

@predictors After extensively discussing this question's resolution, we have decided to unresolve it and leave it open so it can be settled in June 2022 (the original resolution date), since more information will probably be forthcoming in the next few months regarding the views of the various bodies of the intelligence community (IC) on this subject. So by 1 June 2022, we will hopefully have more clarity on what all the IC bodies think and how their statements can be translated to probabilities (i.e., whether at least one IC body believes there is a >50...

Tom Inglesby, Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, argues today in a Twitter thread that monkeypox meets the definition of a PHEIC. The relevant WHO Emergency Committee meets tomorrow to decide whether to declare a PHEIC.

[Results](https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moderna-Announces-Omicron-Containing-Bivalent-Booster-Candidate-mRNA-1273.214-Demonstrates-Superior-Antibody-Response-Against-Omicron/default.aspx) on a booster candidate tailored against Omicron: Moderna's bivalent booster dose (targets both Omicron and WT) increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron by 8x above baseline levels, which is 1.75x more than the WT booster did. Moderna says this bivalent vaccine is their "lead candidate for a Fall 2022 booster" Note that as per t...

Today's WHO meeting seems to be a Strategic and Technical Advisory Group meeting, which does not determine whether conditions for PHEICs are met.

An IHR Emergency Committee meeting is where the determination is made as to whether the conditions for a PHEIC have been met. I haven't seen anything yet about such a meeting having been scheduled, but would be surprised if one wasn't scheduled soon.

Resolves positive on the basis of the UK [approving](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/first-bivalent-covid-19-booster-vaccine-approved-by-uk-medicines-regulator) a bivalent vaccine which targets both the original SARS-CoV-2 from 2020 and Omicron. This vaccine [is Moderna's mRNA-1273.214](https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Medicines-and-Healthcare-Products-Regulatory-Agency-MHRA-Authorizes-Modernas-Omicron-Containing-Bivalent-Booster-in-the-UK/default.aspx), which [contains 32 of Omicron's spike mutations](https://investors.modernatx...

There's a new [technical briefing](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/950823/Variant_of_Concern_VOC_202012_01_Technical_Briefing_3_-_England.pdf) out from Public Health England. An especially relevant section is where they track the % B.1.1.7 samples of all samples with 69 and 70 amino acid deletions (which causes the S gene dropout in diagnostic PCR testing) over time. >Week beginning | Per cent VOC of all Δ69-70 > 2020-10-12 | 03% > 2020-10-19 | 15% > 2020-10-26 | 29% > 2020-11-02 | 6...

Nate Silver puts the probability of a Dem trifecta at 60-65%

UK has [updated](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monkeypox-outbreak-epidemiological-overview/monkeypox-outbreak-epidemiological-overview-1-july-2022) its monkeypox case count, they've now confirmed 1235 cases. Among 1185 where gender info is known, 1180 are male and 5 are female — so over 99% of confirmed cases are males. This is not something we'd be seeing if transmission was being largely mediated via aerosols. The latest ECDC [report](https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/communicable-disease-threats-report-26-june-2-july-2022-w...

I've resolved this positively on the basis of Omicron having caused more than 10M infections globally by the end of 2021 and having a >=50% greater attack rate in those with pre-existing immunity. Basis for each: **10M infections globally by the end of 2021**: According to [CovGlobe](https://covglobe.org/), which uses [GISAID sequence data](https://www.gisaid.org/hcov19-variants/), Omicron made up ~5% of sequences the week ending 11 December, ~20% of sequences the week ending 18 December, ~42% of sequences for the week ending 25 December and ~67% of o...

@(FranekŻak) Agreed, I've added this to the resolution text. I've also made it clear that only some multi-valent booster candidates would count toward positive resolution: > - The booster dose formulation can also include formulations that target other variants (e.g., Delta) so long as the Omicron variant is specifically targeted as well. - Multi-valent booster candidates, such those [being developed by Moderna](https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-strategy-address-omicron-b11529-sars-cov-2), would count...

@nextbigfuture This does not seem like a credible news source.

There's a [new analysis](https://twitter.com/TWenseleers/status/1343575693544796160) out today by biostatistician Tom Wenseleers (not peer reviewed). He predicts ">90% of all infections will be by this strain across the UK by February 1st" and argues that the growth rate of this strain in the UK "translates to selective advantage of 56%-87%." This builds on CMMID COVID-19 working group's 23 Dec [epidemiological/modelling paper](https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/uk-novel-variant.html) that finds the UK strain is "56% more transmissible (95% credibl...

@(EvanHarper) There is a lot to rebut in that article, but at the very least the main claim that "it is a remarkable coincidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats before the pandemic outbreak" is a demonstrably...odd claim. The SARS epidemic, which largely afflicted China, gave research on coronaviruses an ["enormous infusion of energy and activity"](https://journals.lww.com/pidj/Fulltext/2005/11001/History_and_Recent_Advances_in_Coronavirus.12.aspx) and a Chinese team based at the Wuhan ...

I have extended the time this question is open through the end of August. This question also now has a sister question that pertains to rioting across the entire US instead of a 100km radius. Note that the resolution criteria for this new question require 3x the number of deaths, arrests, or property damage for positive resolution.

— edited by juancambeiro1015

@(davidmanheim) @casens I have updated the resolution criteria to clarify that new variants of an existing human-infecting pathogen would not count as "novel" under any circumstances. In the very specific case of influenza A, a flu virus resulting from antigenic shift — essentially, the arising of a novel influenza virus in a way that is substantially different from the arising of any other variants for any other pathogen — would count. The new resolution criteria text is as follows: > Variants of pathogens currently causing human disease, such as vari...

Interesting context on the vote taken by the WHO committee in which they did not recommend declaration of a PHEIC:

Of 14 emergency committee members, three were in favor of declaring a PHEIC, but 11 felt the conditions were not met (yet)

The IFR for 74-year-olds is ~4%.

[Preliminary results](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/23/842818125/coronavirus-has-infected-a-fifth-of-new-york-city-testing-suggests) from a large serosurvey (to my knowledge, the largest done anywhere to date) completed by New York's state government shows ~21.2% of people in NYC have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. 21.2% of NYC's population of 8.4mil = ~1.78 mil infected New Yorkers. The [latest NYC fatality data](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page) is 15,411 deaths. 15,411/1.78mil = IFR of ~0.87%. Ve...

@Linch And....drum roll...it's the right prediction! Great job, team!