The US's situation is much worse than people realize.
We're not just reaching historical maximums in cases. We're growing exponentially again.
This chart shows current daily cases and projects for the next 3 weeks if growth continues as in the last week.
[1/11]
We're not just reaching historical maximums in cases. We're growing exponentially again.
This chart shows current daily cases and projects for the next 3 weeks if growth continues as in the last week.
[1/11]
If you're having a deja vu, that's because this is exactly where we were 3 months ago, when we were alerting the world of the danger of exponential growth. [2/11]
I used to do this type of analysis for the world, and then I went into the detail of the countries. So let's do that again, this time with US states. [3/11]
34 states are growing in cases. Too bad I can't capitalize numbers. Over 2/3 of US states are growing cases. The fastest growth, Idaho, is as a whopping 15% daily growth. That's 7x in two weeks.
States ordered from highest growth (bottom) to lowest (top) [4/11]
States ordered from highest growth (bottom) to lowest (top) [4/11]
But growth is not everything. Size matters too. Five states account for ~55% of daily cases: Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia and California. [5/11]
If we use the same simple projection for the next few weeks, we get an even worse result, getting into the 70-80k daily cases. I don't think we'll get there (eg, hopefully we take measures), but it illustrates the exponential growth we're getting into. [6/11]
And no, this is not due to more testing. [7/11]
Do you remember the debate back in March? "We shouldn't panic!" In retrospect, panicking was a reasonable choice. Maybe if we had panicked in the US, we wouldn't be where we are. [8/11]
I've thought about that term, "panicking". The issue is that it's a mix of two things: acting fast and mindlessly. That's what we've done, but sequentially.
First, we acted fast.
Then, we acted mindlessly.
[9/11]
First, we acted fast.
Then, we acted mindlessly.
[9/11]
Now we need to revert that: Stop acting mindlessly, and start acting fast. We're back at that moment when every day counts. [10/11]
The governors of the top 5 states in terms of cases must act. @BrianKempGA (Georgia), @GregAbbott_TX, @dougducey(Arizona), @RonDeSantisFL (Florida) & @GavinNewsom must decide to control this epidemic. Hundreds of thousands of lives are in their hands—again. [11/11]
