3/20 we had 10,000 dead.
3/25 we crossed the 20,000 dead threshold.
3/31 we crossed the 40,000 dead threshold.
The death rate is doubling every 5 days (worldwide - figures based on Johns Hopkins statistics).
The pattern everywhere is that this thing spikes at a certain point and then levels off and drops. It’s already happening in Washington state as it has in many other countries who had it earlier.
Washington's Governor declared a State of Emergency in Feb, one month ago and has been tightening it up ever since. The "Stay Home, Stay Healthy" initiative was on March 25.
Seattle closed the public schools on March 12. They had been fighting to keep them open since March 1, every daily letter the school superintendent released explained why she hadn't done it yet. Parents were already keeping kids home, and eventually they quit hiding behind the Public Health Dept and closed them.
So, to say the exponential growth isn't happening and cite Seattle, the city and State that were the first to put all sorts of measures (including VERY harsh "close everything" rules) into effect before anyone else seems odd.
Maybe use numbers from Sweden, I think they are taking a less stringent approach. Or some big cities in Africa, once it gets established there. I think they will treat it like the common cold, so we'll see how that works.
I have no problem with stay home from school orders. Getting kids out of public school is a win-win situation. I’m referring to closing businesses. If Washington just closed everything 6 days ago, I don’t think that was responsible for lowering their numbers. We need to talk more about their testing and contact tracing. I read something about them doing it early on.
The main models I have in mind are the Asian countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan. I think some of them definitely closed schools but there weren’t strict business closures from what I read. I don’t think they did anything that remotely required a big spending bill.
I have never argued for doing nothing. I’ve most often argued in favor of the South Korean response. But the numbers show that the outbreak subsides EVERYWHERE across the board, no matter what kind of response. That tells me that the most common denominator method, the old, tried-and-true quarantining of the sick and the incoming travelers is what’s doing the trick more than anything else.
This shutdown/social distancing model was trying to prevent the initial outbreak. That has SEVERAL problems. If you wait until you have initial cases like they did, you’re already too late. If you do start it early, you may never be able to stop, because as soon as you stop, you will then get your initial cases and have your outbreak. And lastly, it comes at an enormous economic cost that no one thought was justifiable unless these predictions of millions of deaths were actually going to happen. And now the argument becomes circular. The evidence shows that those mass deaths do NOT occur anywhere, most likely because of simple, old-fashioned, traditional methods of quarantine.