I’m with you.
Thanks. So our best information is the “doubling number” and our best source is #new deaths. As a nation we entered the “exponential phase last week when it was clear what the doubling number was, prior to that day the data was sporadic and there was “no signal in the noise”. I don’t recall which day it was but if you look at #new deaths form weeks ago the data was all sporadic. Since then the #number of new deaths has been doubling about every two days. So we are clearly in the “exponential phase” and have been, by definition, in an “epidemic”. Now agreed, new deaths is a lagging indicator but it’s the best we have.
Consider: all the groups with the disease have been progressing at their own rate but they are all pretty much parallel with the same slope. But the asymptomatic may be ten days ahead of the dead and the seriously ill may be only a couple of days ahead of the dead, on average. It’s like a train on a roller coaster. The asymptomatic are in the first car, etc. and the dead are in the last. So the disease itself is some two weeks out front of the dead. The dead will go over the top last. Next Monday we will know where we “are” and at that time our mitigation efforts kick in. If there should be something else we have done in the interval that may show up at that tie as well.
So everything up to Mar. 31 is very predictable. After that my crystal ball breaks. It’s anyone’s guess. The most effective thing we can do is “not get it” which is why isolation is so important. What the numbers are next week will be a “grade” on how week we have done. Let’s pray to God we “pass”.
Is that all comprehensible or just, what is the word for “professional vocabulary”, just jargon? I do hope not.