Let's talk about "exponential growth" for a moment. Today, the United States reached 80k TOTAL cases of the Covid-19 since the crisis began, more than any other country. Because exponential growth, that means we'll have 80k more cases by Sunday.
The "doubling-time" is less than 3 days for U.S. cases of the Covid-19. That means every 3 days we get more new cases than the cumulative total of all previous cases.
It's taken us 3 months to get the first 80k cases, and 3 days to get the next 80k cases.
It's taken us 3 months to get the first 80k cases, and 3 days to get the next 80k cases.
Here is the graph from FT.com today. The graph by Sunday will look much the same, just the scales will be different, with the Y-scale going to 200,000 instead of 100,00 
A lot of people talk about LINEAR adjustments to these numbers. They don't make as much difference as you think.
For example, people often say we should consider population, the U.S has 330-million people but Italy only 60-million. This doesn't matter in this graph.
For example, people often say we should consider population, the U.S has 330-million people but Italy only 60-million. This doesn't matter in this graph.
Likewise, the precise start date of "100 cases" doesn't make much difference. It means shifting the U.S. numbers just a couple spots/days to the left of the right. It doesn't change the fact that the current doubling times in the United States is around 2.5 days.
