The case for staying at home (March 24)

I posted this to a local group on Nextdoor.com back on March 24.  A lot has changed since then, but I'm posting this now to be a background for an update that I will post next.

Hello neighbors. I realize that we're all going through a very difficult time. However, it seems that many people in California don't fully understand the benefit of social distancing, or why we need to stay indoors. I have been tracking data from Johns Hopkins, and I thought I would share. 

The first case to look is Italy. Outside of China, Italy is the most infected country in the world with 63,927 cases on March 23 (let's not get too happy - we're at 46,332). They were growing at a rate of 33%/day (like pretty much every country other than Japan). However, when 0.015% of their population was infected, they implemented a country-wide shutdown. This was on March 10. It's now been two weeks, and we can see the results in the graph. 

Their growth rate started dropping - 25%/day, 20%/day, 18%/day, 15%/day, 10%/day, and then yesterday they grew at 8%/day. The last two days showed fewer new cases than the day before. Two weeks after a national shutdown, they *may* be over the half-way point. If their infectivity keeps dropping, they might only see 15,000 deaths. 

However, if we compare their results to the US, we see a few things. Italy shut down at 0.015%, Spain shut down at 0.014% and LA shutdown (Eaton canyon and beaches aside) at 0.002%. The US as a whole will burst past 0.015% tomorrow, and instead President Trump is talking about *lifting* any restrictions. Ok, so how are those restrictions doing for us? 

The second graph shows Italy, the US, Los Angeles (LA), and Canada and it plots the new cases each day (as a percent of population). You can see Italy's recent downturn. But you can see how the US has exploded nationally (over 11 thousand cases were added *yesterday* - a week ago the entire country only had 4,661). 

So, what does this second graph tell us? Well, the US is where Italy and Spain shut down, and the federal government is still not doing that (although multiple states and cities are acting on their own to do so). Secondly, we're just where Italy was about 10 days ago, but growing much more rapidly. Third, you can see a significant difference between LA and the rest of the US (note, these figures already have population factored in, so don't make the mistake of thinking that LA has fewer people than the US - this has been accounted for). 

So, we *NEED* to shut down. It does work. It is working. We need to stay away from each other. Group with your family, but don't go near anyone else. We must freeze this in its tracks, and the benefits are there. The quicker we shut this down, the shorter we'll be stuck in home. The US as a whole is growing at 35%/day. Unabated, this will be close to ONE MILLION people infected by early April. We cannot let that happen, and this is why everyone is saying this is as serious as it is. I hope this data has been helpful. You can see it yourself at Johns Hopkins (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6). 

Stay safe. Help your neighbors. Let's get through this.