I’m not an epidemiologists (former research biochemist and high school chemistry teacher), but I was looking at the graphs and doing some of the math for the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. and some specific states. The graph below is based upon conditions NOW:
I’m sorry it came out small, but the U.S. is on a trajectory of a doubling time for coronavirus cases of between every 2 to 3 days. I got this graph from the Financial Times. You should be able to click on the link to see it for yourself.
If the data is correct, the growth in coronavirus cases increases exponentially. This means that you can use an exponential equation to calculate the number of total coronavirus cases at a future time if you know the growth rate and have an initial number of cases.
NOTE: I tried the trick that one of my commenters suggested to fix that unreadable graph. I couldn’t do it (not sure why), so I have place it in the the title image space.
If you take the very current number of coronavirus cases from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center as a= 92,932. Let’s assume that the the coronavirus growth rate is a doubling for every three days (time interval is three days and the r = 1 for 100% growth in that time interval). Plugging in those values, in three weeks (7 time intervals) the U.S. will have 11,896,121 total coronavirus cases.
I picked the three week number (7 time intervals) because I Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that they will not hit peak infections for another three weeks. This is just for NY. Keep that in mind.
If the death rate is 1%, that means approximately 112,000 deaths due to coronavirus in the U.S. by the end of the three weeks.
All of the above depends upon conditions on the ground. In other words, is there a real shutdown nationwide? Or will we continue this haphazard and partial state shutdowns?
And what if you do nothing or like Mississippi embrace the spread of the coronavirus? Let’s do some math there.
Let’s go with MS. They have 573 cases right now. Plugging that in for “a” and in three weeks MS will have 73,334 coronavirus cases. NY’s hospitals are overwhelmed when they had approximately 30,000 coronavirus cases. Anyone think that MS has better hospitals than NY? Is MS hiding some really great healthcare delivery system under a bush?
Next, let’s look at some other wonderful Southern states:
AL 69,120 projected cases
FL 371,200 projected cases
GA 210,176 projected cases
TN 147,584 projected cases
SC 58,638 projected cases
NC 105,472 projected cases
KY* 31,744 projected cases based upon March 26th cases.
AR 44,928 projected cases
VA 76,928 projected cases
MO 66,560 projected cases
I did not include LA because they have placed a shelter in place order because it is now a hotspot for the coronavirus. And TX is TX. Southern but also Western.
Another caveat to this data: lack of tests. This has hamstrung all the states, so the numbers are just not entirely accurate.
And this also depends upon the actions and inactions of the mayors and state governors. Here is a link to what each state has done with executive orders on the coronavirus pandemic.
Basically, if this data is valid, several governors who have their thumbs up their ass will face numbers far worse than NY is dealing with now. Besides Governor Death of MS, Ron de Santis will have plenty of preventable deaths on his hands. Most of the Southern states have Republican governors, and this looks to be all about money and politics.
