Background and scope

In the spring of 2020 three Dutch actuaries decided to come together and discuss how they could contribute to a better understanding of the Corona pandemic. Although there was limited data available, we believe that actuaries with their mathematical and modelling skills can provide insight by making future predictions. Over the last couple of months we have looked into Corona assumptions, different modelling options, and differences and similarities between countries. The concrete results of these efforts so far have been two models: one showing the long term effect on infections, and IC patients, the other reflecting the uncertainty around Furthermore we have looked into the effects for different countries around the globe.

 

Website content

This website provides the following information:

• Dashboard providing an up to date projection for the next 4 weeks on nr of infections, IC patients
• Simulation tool which allows the user to perform their own simulation and get a feel for the effect different variables have on the nr of healthy, infected and severely ill people
• Published articles ranging from in-depth articles describing the assumptions and modelling in great detail, to articles published in newspaper which provide a generic feel for our analyses and provide food for thought before looking into more details;
• Assumptions and references which allows the reader to do their own background research

 

Project approach

We believe that Corona research is like running a marathon and it will take several cycles to really get to a deep understanding about the patterns we currently observe. The amount of research and data on Corona is still limited but we believe that based on new information and different policies between countries, one can get a better understanding of the impact of the virus over time by different perspectives and analyses. We therefore don’t pretend that our research of website is “complete” however think that by continuous updating we will be able to improve our understanding and continue approaching closer to the truth.

As per August 2020 we view this marathon as follows:

1. Creation of a steady state markov model which predicts the long term nr effects of the virus
2. Creation of a stochastic simulation generation model which provides insight in the variability of results which can be observed between countries or between regions
3. Qualitative comparison between countries on the moment of the start of Corona waves and the impact that government intervention has on restricting the spreading of the virus (outstanding)
4. Model improvements taking into account aspects like seasonality, additional data points, improved assumptions and more (outstanding)
5. Impact of Corona or lockdown measures on the economy (outstanding)

 

Limitations

We are not linked to any government or advisory institutions and our models are the best possible approximations of data and research which we have come across. We ourselves are not medical professionals and therefore have taken results from medical studies as given as we are not in the position to challenge them.

 

Feedback and comments

We are a group of independent actuaries who share these insights on a non-for-profit basis and welcome questions, comments and ideas so we can improve our understanding of the behavior of the virus which will enable societies to take preventive measures on time.