Do the math!

In my post last Thursday, I pointed out that the reported US total of coronavirus cases was six on March 3, but was 1,500 that morning; i.e. 250 times higher. I said that it would undoubtedly be over 2,000 by the end of the weekend, and now (early Sunday morning) I read that it’s 2,700 (and it’s absolutely certain it will be over 3,000 by the end of the day – it probably is at this moment). So the number has doubled in three days.

I hope nobody is going to take comfort in the fact that the rate of increase has declined precipitously, since increasing at the earlier rate means we would have 94 million cases about 17 days from today. But say it keeps doubling every three days (in fact, I know that’s what happened in Wuhan and Italy at one point); that means we’ll have around 384,000 cases in three weeks (by the way, it’s not known that the coronavirus takes weekends off, so you have to use seven-day weeks). And then about 800,000 cases 3 days later, 1.6 million 3 days after that, 3.2 million 3 days after that…You see where this is going.

Of course, there’s the consideration that social distancing is increasing all the time, which – as I pointed out yesterday – is the only real mitigation (there’s no “solution” left at this point, and it’s no longer possible even to contain the virus in the US, as countries like Singapore, South Korea and China – outside Hubei province – have done). Since that’s already occurring and the cases still doubled in three days, it’s not likely that the “double every three days” rule won’t hold at least for a couple weeks. So it’s almost baked in the cake that we’ll be around at least 300,000 cases in three weeks.

And that’s assuming the rate of increase doesn’t go up, not down. The reason why it may very well go up is that there’s such a huge number of cases out there that haven’t been identified, because of a lack of tests. Yesterday, I quoted the estimate that there are actually 16,000 cases in Washington state, vs. a few hundred reported (actually, I wrote that from memory, without verifying in the article that my post yesterday was based on. In fact, while the article says the true figure – and this was as of March 10 – was 16,000, the reported figure was only 140).

As of yesterday, only 20,000 tests had been done in total in the US, according to the CDC site. Since it often takes two tests to get an accurate reading on whether the person is infected or not, I’m guessing that this is less than 15,000 people actually tested. So even if every test in the US had been done in the state of Washington, there would still be 1,000 people not tested. And this ignores the fact that the testing number is as of March 14, while the 16,000 estimate was as of March 10.

This means that if the real number of cases for the US is 30,000 today (which is very conservative. Remember, there were 16,000 real cases in Washington state on the 10^th. That number has more than doubled by today, so Washington state alone probably has more than 30,000 now). If that number doubles every three days, what happens? In that case, we will have – get ready for it – at least 1.9 million – cases in two weeks. Of course, the reported number will be less, since it’s highly unlikely there will be anywhere near enough tests done to ascertain the real number by then (which also means that the real number would be higher than 1.9 million, since all those untested people have been busily infecting others, for an average of at least 5 days. And the article points out that there was one super-spreader in Wuhan - I think - that infected 1,000 people).

Now let’s talk about something you and I don’t want to talk about: the number of deaths likely. As the article pointed out, the mortality rate of Covid-19 is between .5 and 4 percent, with the actual rate being very dependent on how prepared the health system is. The US is badly unprepared, so let’s say our rate will be 3% - at least for the next two weeks. That means that, of the 1.9 million people actually infected two weeks from now, 57,000 will die, which just happens to be the total number of Americans that died in the war in Vietnam, and dwarfs the total Americans that died in all the wars since then. The good news about this number is that, assuming Covid-19 doesn’t affect a single person after March 29, that will be the total deaths in the epidemic in the US. But the bad news is there’s no chance in hell that the epidemic will be over in two weeks.

Of course, if there is massive social distancing, these numbers will be much less. This just shows how important social distancing is (in my case, I’m resolved not to leave home except for weekly grocery store trips, and I’m going to try to keep six feet from other people – not exactly possible in the checkout line, of course – so that I won’t be in the radius to possibly get infected if they sneeze or cough. But in another week or even less, I may resolve to buy all of my groceries on Amazon).

It also shows how criminal it is that the Federal government isn’t preaching the gospel of social distancing from every (digital) street corner or crossroads in America – TODAY!

This blog is normally about cybersecurity and compliance in the electric power industry, and I also intend to keep writing about that during this crisis (although if I keep seeing depressing new numbers, I'm going to write about them instead). However, I will also keep doing posts on my normal topic as well. If you want to get the posts emailed to you, enter your address in the box at the top right of this page. If cybersecurity isn’t your cup of tea, you can always cancel your subscription when I consider the crisis over – I’ll let you know when I do. And you'll get a full refund of every penny you paid...:)