May 9, 2023: Congratulations to the top 3 prize winners of the Keep Virginia Safe Tournament, Sergio, 2e10e122, and mattvdm, and thank you to all who participated! Read more about the conclusion of the tournament in this discussion post.

July 31, 2022: Read the report summarizing the results of the Keep Virginia Safe Tournament here.

Since March 2020, Metaculus has been providing forecasting and modeling resources to public health professionals and public policy experts as they have navigated critical decisions about COVID-19 interventions in communities around the world.

Public health officials in Virginia are currently weighing key decisions, with the following questions and others under careful consideration:

• How many new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths can we expect in this new Delta-driven wave?
• How will the levels and causes of vaccine hesitancy change over the coming months?
• When will a vaccine be authorized for children under 12?
• When will a vaccine receive full FDA approval?
• How many school districts might participate in weekly screening/testing programs?
• Will there be new variants capable of overtaking Delta?

This Tournament will directly address these key scientific and policy questions by aggregating knowledge from many experts and forecasters.

The tournament will run from April 2021 until April 2022, with two types of questions:

• Calibration Questions: these close before the end date of the tournament, and are used to rank you in the tournament
• Long-term Questions: in order to probe far into the future, and build the Metaculus data set on predictions, we are including a number of far-reaching questions that may not resolve for many years.

Thank you for your contributions to this initiative, and as always, Happy Predicting!