1000 deaths per day, dear god.

that it's a serious threat. It is! It's just not possible to make any number predictions with any authority.

This is based on a study done by Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) that was published on more than a week ago analyzing the outcomes of 72,314 infected people.

http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51

https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/recession-is-imminent-we-need-a-travel-ban-now-817736/

Casualty rate isn’t tracking at same rate as Italy’s. Could change, but so far, it’s not. Nate Silver covered this over the weekend.

But in a seemingly never ending quest to see who can create the most melodramatic post why bother with the other side of the story.

You just need to listen to the news or read a reputable article and have the sense you were born with. Look at all those people that are going out still. Many are quite smart and educated and older. They just are selfish, self absorbed, and irresponsible and hear and believe whatever is convenient for them. They think, "Fuck everyone else".

STAY HOME EVERYONE!

how in a couple of weeks -- almost the time where these numbers are going to be reached -- he's going to have to do something to stop these lockdown measures because of their cost. [not his exact words, of course, which are incoherent, as usual, when parsed literally]

Just that wording alone, there's literally no good scenario that can come from that. If he reopens businesses, we're screwed. If he escalates the quarantine, or keeps the lockdowns in place, we're screwed. This will not end well.

officials to stop quarantines or other health-emergency orders. He's going to have to try to bully, coerce, blackmail, and abuse other various authorities he does have. It will be a chaotic muddle, with tons of disconnect and conflict between federal, state, and local authorities.

He's just not doing it yet because something something leverage.

This fool's trying to kill us all. When are we going to stand our ground?

Kick

That's essentially two weeks from today. That means we'll have 12,400 deaths or so in two weeks. I don't think it'll be that high or anywhere near that high.

Of course, we are a much larger country, but without enforced quarantines its going to keep spreading like wildfire.

I do think we'll surpass 1,000 in a week, though.

Yes it will. Humans don't do exponential math instinctively.

Think of it this way: There is a doubling rate. That is the essence of exponential math. His estimate is that the doubling rate is 3 days. This is borne out by the way the disease has progressed in every single venue where it has been observed.

The purpose of social distancing, lockdowns, and all the rest is to stretch the doubling rate. So instead of 3 days maybe it takes 4 or 5 or 6. Bear in mind that changing the doubling rate to half requires heroic measures. And it's still an exponential progression.

So here's the rub: Half the people who will ever get the disease will get it in the final doubling interval. Yes, it's a little more complicated than that because the disease is starved for new victims as it saturates the population, but that's still pretty close to what actually happens. Nine tenths of all the people who will ever get it will get it in the last two and a half doubling intervals.

His estimate, which is fairly sound, is that there are currently 2 million Americans who are infected. Out of a population of 350 million this is nowhere near saturation so the doubling can be expected to proceed apace. The only thing that is known to slow it down is starving the disease of new victims by isolation. Since the disease takes 24 days to run its course the effects of isolation only become noticeable after a few weeks.

That 2-week death toll he predicts is from people who are already sick. There is nothing we can do to stop it. We have a very large population and it is nowhere near saturation. His model is not alarmist; if anything it is conservative. It's just what exponential math does. It rolls along almost below the threshold of perception until blammo, it blows up in your face. We're not used to things that do that. We tend to assume things will progress linearly, with today looking more or less like yesterday and tomorrow looking more or less like today. But that's not how this will work. One day tomorrow will look like a mushroom cloud.

One day fairly soon.

The emperor or shah or whatever was very pleased and asked him what would
your reward be? He said, I would like a single grain of rice on the first square
and two on the second square and four on the third, doubling each time.
The emperor asked That's all? Just some rice? It was more rice than in the entire kingdom by the 64th square.

...but by the 48th square you have all the rice in the world. By the 64th you have more than the mass of the entire world.

And we'll revisit this post at the end of the week just to make sure. I think we push beyomd 1,000 by next Monday but we're not going to see 12,400 deaths by the 7th.

12,000 is not a large or alarmist number to predict in this situation.

You keep saying you don't believe the 12,000 figure but on what basis do you disbelieve it? Because I read the OP and the conclusion is inevitable given the assumptions, all of which are if anything conservative.

Does your intuition tell you it's not possible? Intuition doesn't work on exponential phenomena. Studies have shown our instinct is to predict things linearly. But this isn't linear. All exponential phenomena reach a point where they appear to explode. That is surprising the first few times it happens, but eventually you learn that for an exponential phenomenon that explosion is normal.

There are measurements which can be used to describe an epidemic. You plug them into the equation and it predicts -- correctly based on the exponential behavior -- what the phenomenon is likely to do in the future. This is all the OP has done. So far the pandemic has spread exponentially in every population where it has taken a foothold until it either saturated the population or was starved for more victims by aggressive containment measures.

But the 12,000 figure is based mostly on people who are already sick. The social distancing and shutting down measures aren't likely to reduce it much by that point. With luck, we can maybe stop it from turning into 100,000 ten days later. Those numbers are not sensationalized; they are a baseline. Expecting anything less is innumerate wishful thinking.

Bookmark this thread. It's not going to happen that rapidly. Even if you extrapolate Italy's numbers to that of the US, it doesn't hit 12,400+ dead in a two week span.

It isn't going to happen. And we'll see this by Wednesday. So, come back to this thread and we'll find out.

Perhaps you should take a look.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

USA yesterday - Cases 43,734 New cases +10,168 Total deaths 553 New Deaths +140

USA today - Cases 52,921 New Cases +9,187 Total deaths 684 New Deaths +131

Then take a look at the graphs.

We're still nowhere near the daily amount to hit 12,000+ in two weeks. By Friday, we'll probably be at 1,200 dead. By next Tuesday, it's likely going to be around 2,500. And by April 7th, likely 4,000. But not over 12,000.

It’s April 1. The total is 5,110.

Yesterday’s total was 912. Today was 1049.

The doubling time is roughly three days.

That’s the difference between linear growth and exponential growth.

So, good luck.

I'm sure, in two weeks, when we're nowhere near 12,000+ dead, you guys won't come back and apologize for being absolutely bonkers alarmist.

The US currently has 696. 143 so far today (141 yesterday).

There's zero evidence we're going to see the type of spike it'd take to meet that goal two weeks from today.

After tomorrow, to get to that point, we'll have to see 1,000+ die every day and we've seen no evidence we're even remotely close to that point.

Do you get it now?






Stop trying to minimize what is going on here.

The day is not finished, and we are past the prediction in the OP.

IT WAS LOW.

Again, I understand that people do not intuitively grasp how exponential growth works, but today's numbers were completely predictable two weeks ago, and the prediction of what day we would reach 12,000 was precisely accurate.

We haven't even hit 1,000 dead. We probably will by the end of this week. But I'm not buying we'll see a surge of 11,000+ more dead between the end of this week and the 7th.

That's two weeks from today and we're currently at 660 deaths total.

That would not be a "surge".

It is a simple projection of the current trend.

Since you don't understand the reality of how nature works in this regard, it's easier shown with pictures.

These are US cases so far:



An easier way to understand an exponential growth curve is to visualize it in logarithmic form. So point your reality-perceiving devices at this:



Do you see how that lines up?

Do you see how each tick on the vertical scale is a factor of 10?

What that means is that the time it takes to go from 10 to 100 is the same as it takes to go from 100 to 1000 which is the same as it takes to to from 1000 to 10000.

That is the reality, DI.

Moving from cases to deaths, you have to understand that deaths lag cases. In other words, it takes several days on average for people to go from being a case to a death.

Here it is on a linear scale:



Here it is on a logarithmic scale:



Do you know how to draw a straight line with a ruler?

Even if we are following a Gaussian curve, we have not yet hit an inflection point. We are nowhere near an inflection point.

I'm sorry to break it to you, but neither your "gut feel", nor Trump's for that matter, is a reflection of any "reality".

This isn't my gut, btw. It's reality.

It would be good to recalibrate your gut to the actual reality, and not minimize what is going on here.

The prediction in the OP was absolutely balls-on accurate.

And it has been obviously accurate to anyone who can read a graph. The slope of the line remained pretty much straight from the time this article was posted.

Math works. It really does.

after reading this thread. I use those graphs several times a day to track the growth. April 8th is right on target.

Does this mean I win my own thread?

I might have remembered to check it more often if I hadn't apparently caught the COVID-19 myself and started showing weird, but fortunately non life-threatening, symptoms around the 18th. One of my coworkers was among the first 100 people in Louisiana to test positive, and my odd little bout is perfectly timed to be a COVID infection I got from him around the 13th. Fortunately it got me in the hip joints (ouch, but not life threatening) instead of the lungs. All clear now. Can't be sure, since you can't get a test unless you're half dead with a fever, but I'm 99% sure that's what it was.

And yeah, math works, ain't it amazing.

This is a stock trader doing a very simplistic/naive analysis. It could be correct, but that would be by luck.

It is simplistic. Also, any article starting with "Hell Is Coming" is irresponsible and meant to be clickbait.

Further, note the suggestion about what stock to buy. Even that is stupid. Hospital stock is going to crash, IMO, when broke people will have no way to pay for intensive, lengthy treatment.

But we are lacking so much data. I think even if the number infected is as predicted it’ll take awhile to reach the death rate discussed. Because, the US really does have great medical care...the catch is for those that can afford it, and when it’s not overwhelmed. For awhile we’ll be able to save a high percentage, but when the numbers skyrocket and facilities are overwhelmed and half the medical staffs are sick themselves... That’s when it’s going to get bad.

It was sealed by denial and inaction in January. We are just along for the ride now.

The health and economic crisis can no longer be avoided it is just a matter of how horrific it will be, and that will be an entirely personal matter. If one of you loved ones suffocates for lack of a ventilator, it will be a disaster, if one of you neighbors dies but your family survives, it will not be as bad as predicted. If you lose your life savings to inflation it will be an economic disaster, if the guy down the street loses his home, it will be a shame.

Its a hard knock life.

By April 7.

I hate that man.