I have two coworkers with the disease.
The rate of growth in Louisiana and in specific parishes starts off at exponential growth.
the number of cases goes up by a factor of 10 every week.
eventually it slows to a powerlaw model and only increases by a factor of 10 every 10 days.
So:
Day 1 1 case
Day 7 10 cases
Day 14 100 cases
Day 21 1,000 cases
Day 28 10,000 cases
Deaths follow the same growth pattern but start 15 days after the first case.
In my county (Panola) in Texas, the first case was four days ago, and then it jumped to four cases yesterday, with the first death also happening yesterday. I know this is too small a sample to show anything, but the word I got was these cases were unrelated community spread. Everyone I know in the county (and, I know A LOT of people in the county) took this thing seriously and did everything they could to avoid it. I guess the next few days will tell the tale.