Forecasting the Omicron Variant with Juan Cambeiro

Global Guessing Podcasts

How should we understand the Omicron relative to Delta? How does Omicron change the nature of the pandemic and what steps should we be taking in response? These questions require navigating and quantifying uncertainty, while also making forecasts about the future. We could think of no one better than Juan Cambeiro for answers.

Juan Cambeiro is a Global Guessing alum, Good Judgment superforecaster, and Metaculus analyst, who placed first in IARPA's FOCUS Tournament on COVID-19 forecasting and was the former first-place COVID forecaster on Good Judgment Open.

Juan recently wrote a fantastic article on Metaculus about the Omicron variant–providing a concise analysis of the variant from an epidemiological and public health perspective, while also offering five concrete forecasts about it.

In this podcast, we'll talk to Juan about how he analyzed and understood the variant, chose and forecasted these five questions, and key signals he’s identified and looking out for in the future. We'll also chat about how policymakers and others should respond to the variant and understand the information from these forecasts. At the end, we'll discuss additional forecasting questions we should be asking to better understand the variant's impact on the pandemic.

Learn more: https://globalguessing.com/forecasting-omicron-juan-cambeiro/

Note: This podcast was recorded on December 6, 2021.