Olde Europe
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- Dec 8, 2014
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The death toll this hour stands at 2,400.
Dr. Fauci thinks, in the end there will be around 100 to 200k fatalities, and the lower bound would be a success.
To put this in context: It took a month for the first 1,000 patients to die.
The next 1000 took just 48 hours.
This is what exponential growth looks like. Still, hard to imagine to get from 2,400 to 100k. But it isn't.
Currently, the infection count doubles about every three days. Let's hope social distancing works and the count slows down and doubles every four days for the next weeks. With some time lag, the death rate follows, all else equal, without some miraculous breakthrough in treatment, that same trajectory.
So, given the trajectory we get to
4,800 in 4 days
9,600 in 8 days
19,200 in 12 days
38,400 in 16 days
76,800 in 20 days
In 24 days, the count will be above 100k.
Look at it in another way:
My back of the envelope calculation suggests we have 5 million infected right now.
In four days, it will be about double that. 10 million infected, assuming a death rate of 1%, means 100k fatalities. This fatality count, since the time between infection and death of the most vulnerable is about 20 days, is about 24 days away. That's barely more than three weeks.
You can see why Dr. Fauci would assert 100k deaths would be optimistic, and that's probably assuming that nowhere in the U.S. the healtcare system is so seriously overwhelmed that the death rate rises even higher. In order to understand what we see here: About 5% of those infected require intensive care - depending on the rate of folks with pre-existing conditions in the population, and how efficiently the most vulnerable are being protected. At 10 million infected, that's 500k, in an ICU bed for two weeks in a roughly four-week period, about halving the number, 250k occupied ICU beds at any time - 2.5 times the pre-epidemic ICU beds in the U.S. (about 100k). We haven't even talked about the fact that these ICU beds are well used, even in normal times. You can see why Gov. Cuomo is insisting on the number of ICU beds to be doubled to prepare for the spike in New York State.
That's all just basic knowledge about the coronavirus and extrapolation, and probably somewhat off the mark, but: Whoever still hasn't understood what lies ahead, the very magnitude of it - wake the fúck up!
Dr. Fauci thinks, in the end there will be around 100 to 200k fatalities, and the lower bound would be a success.
To put this in context: It took a month for the first 1,000 patients to die.
The next 1000 took just 48 hours.
This is what exponential growth looks like. Still, hard to imagine to get from 2,400 to 100k. But it isn't.
Currently, the infection count doubles about every three days. Let's hope social distancing works and the count slows down and doubles every four days for the next weeks. With some time lag, the death rate follows, all else equal, without some miraculous breakthrough in treatment, that same trajectory.
So, given the trajectory we get to
4,800 in 4 days
9,600 in 8 days
19,200 in 12 days
38,400 in 16 days
76,800 in 20 days
In 24 days, the count will be above 100k.
Look at it in another way:
My back of the envelope calculation suggests we have 5 million infected right now.
Let's take a napkin:
80% of covid-19 cases are either asymptomatic or with very mild symptoms. Next to none of them are tested.
At 120,000 confirmed cases, we know there are five times as many, that is, around 600,000 cases out there.
Actually, since symptom expression takes about 10 days, and only those with symptoms are tested, these 120,000 cases with severe symptoms are a snapshot of the situation of 10 days ago.
We also know the virus is highly infectious and spreads at a staggering rate, say, doubling around every three days. With ten days having passed since the snapshot had been taken, the count doubled at least three times, and the actual number of infected today is at least eight times the count of ten days ago, allowing for "stay at home", "social distancing" to have some limited effect since it started. Still, eight times 600,000 means we're facing almost five million infected. Now. Today.
Five million. Even if the spread is slowing down, doubling only every five days, we're 25 days away from 160 million infected.
In four days, it will be about double that. 10 million infected, assuming a death rate of 1%, means 100k fatalities. This fatality count, since the time between infection and death of the most vulnerable is about 20 days, is about 24 days away. That's barely more than three weeks.
You can see why Dr. Fauci would assert 100k deaths would be optimistic, and that's probably assuming that nowhere in the U.S. the healtcare system is so seriously overwhelmed that the death rate rises even higher. In order to understand what we see here: About 5% of those infected require intensive care - depending on the rate of folks with pre-existing conditions in the population, and how efficiently the most vulnerable are being protected. At 10 million infected, that's 500k, in an ICU bed for two weeks in a roughly four-week period, about halving the number, 250k occupied ICU beds at any time - 2.5 times the pre-epidemic ICU beds in the U.S. (about 100k). We haven't even talked about the fact that these ICU beds are well used, even in normal times. You can see why Gov. Cuomo is insisting on the number of ICU beds to be doubled to prepare for the spike in New York State.
That's all just basic knowledge about the coronavirus and extrapolation, and probably somewhat off the mark, but: Whoever still hasn't understood what lies ahead, the very magnitude of it - wake the fúck up!