Original article: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
China decided to lock the entire country down which resulted in containing the spread. This graph compares those results to what we are seeing in other countries:
The article uses current data to model spread and fatality rates and makes the following predictions:
- Countries that are prepared will see a fatality rate of ~0.5% (South Korea) to 0.9% (rest of China).
- Countries that are overwhelmed will have a fatality rate between ~3%-5%
It argues that the United States is not prepared and is on it's way to being overwhelemed. It urges everybody to act now by enforcing social distancing. It uses a model to predict the impact that one day of social distancing can have verses waiting:
In this theoretical model that resembles loosely Hubei, waiting one more day creates 40% more cases! So, maybe, if the Hubei authorities had declared the lockdown on 1/22 instead of 1/23, they might have reduced the number of cases by a staggering 20k.
And remember, these are just cases. Mortality would be much higher, because not only would there be directly 40% more deaths. There would also be a much higher collapse of the healthcare system, leading to a mortality rate up to 10x higher as we saw before. So a one-day difference in social distancing measures can end exploding the number of deaths in your community by multiplying more cases and higher fatality rate.
This is an exponential threat. Every day counts. When you’re delaying by a single day a decision, you’re not contributing to a few cases maybe. There are probably hundreds or thousands of cases in your community already. Every day that there isn’t social distancing, these cases grow exponentially.