It sounds like you’ve found that by March 17, the US will have the same number of cases that Italy had when things turned disastrous.
But the US has five times the population of Italy, and the epidemic in the US seems more spread out compared to Italy (where it was focused in Lombardy). This makes me think we might have another ~3 doubling times (a little over a week) after the time we reach the number of cases that marked the worst phase of Italy, before we get the worst phase here.
I agree that it’s going to get worse than most people expect sooner than most people expect, and that now is a good time to start staying inside. But (and I might be misunderstanding) I’m not sure if I would frame this as “tell people to stay inside for the next five days”, because I do think it’s possible that five days from now nothing has gotten obviously worse and then people will grow complacent.
Fair argument. I’m close enough to Seattle that I’m metering that risk as well. The reality is the rate at which hospitals get overwhelmed will vary by a few days, maybe even a week, across the US.
It sounds like you’ve found that by March 17, the US will have the same number of cases that Italy had when things turned disastrous.
But the US has five times the population of Italy, and the epidemic in the US seems more spread out compared to Italy (where it was focused in Lombardy). This makes me think we might have another ~3 doubling times (a little over a week) after the time we reach the number of cases that marked the worst phase of Italy, before we get the worst phase here.
I agree that it’s going to get worse than most people expect sooner than most people expect, and that now is a good time to start staying inside. But (and I might be misunderstanding) I’m not sure if I would frame this as “tell people to stay inside for the next five days”, because I do think it’s possible that five days from now nothing has gotten obviously worse and then people will grow complacent.
Fair argument. I’m close enough to Seattle that I’m metering that risk as well. The reality is the rate at which hospitals get overwhelmed will vary by a few days, maybe even a week, across the US.