Originally Posted by
patty50
We probably are looking at the same data.
I have repeatedly seen claims that doubling every 2 days would be the benchmark and we are well short of that. Whether that is useful or not I don’t know but I’ll run with it. Based on 446 cases on January 21 we would expect 57000 tomorrow, if there are 40000 new cases announced tomorrow I’ll be the first to run around like a headless chicken.
10 days ago I was envisaging apocalyptic levels of contagion which so far do not seem to be playing out. Every day that goes by the scientists are working around the clock on vaccines, treatments etc.
To top it off we still have almost no transmission outside of China, including in culturally and racially similar countries. If that isn’t cause for optimism I don’t know what is.
Oh, sorry, I hadn’t seen those claims. Doubling every two days would be unlikely...that would get the entire world in two months. Its bad enough going up around 45% every two days, which should take a couple of weeks longer*
*I know that’s not going to happen for several reasons. I think the rate is going to slow down with isolation, etc, but probably not below the level of say flu. Which is of course as much wishful thinking as anything