Thread by @saradannerdukic

It’s difficult to get our minds around exponential growth because it’s largely invisible to us, even though we’re surrounded by it in our daily lives. (Mold grows exponentially. And yeast. And populations. And your money, with compound interest.)

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So let’s try to get our minds around it.

Imagine you made a deal with your bank, and convinced them to give you 1 penny on the first day of the month, then double it every day thereafter. So on day two, you have 2 cents. Day three, 4 cents; day 5, 8 cents, and so on.

By day 8 you have a buck-28. So what. Big deal.

By day 15 you have $163. Okay, nice.

When will you have over half a million dollars?

Answer: 12 days later, on day 27. On that day, you’ll have $671,088.64

When will you be a millionaire?
Answer: the next day, on day 28. On that day, you’ll have $1.3 million.

On day 30, you’ll have $5.3 million.

Day 1: 1 cent
Day 30: $5.3 million

If you’re a visual person…

Days 1 through 7:

Days 8 and 10:

Day 22:

Day 30:

Okay. I used humor to get your attention and help you understand with those graphics.

But there’s nothing funny at all about exponential growth when it comes to viral infections.

Amy Acton was expecting cases to eventually double around every 6 days.
news5cleveland.com/news/continuin…

She was very close. November 3:
daytondailynews.com/news/coronavir…

November 13:
abc6onyourside.com/news/local/nov…

Let’s go to national numbers.

Another way of looking at this: of all the cases the United States has had to date, 25% of them have been in the last 3 weeks.

https://twitter.com/saradannerdukic/status/1330384325074890753?s=20

50% of them have been since September 1.
covidtracking.com/data/national/…

Let’s go back to our bank scenario. Here it is expressed in graphs.

Does the shape of the graph look familiar?
Source: covidtracking.com/data

So imagine that kind of growth + spread, and then this:

https://twitter.com/Max_Gorden/status/1329945642026684418?s=20

👆 It’s like pouring gasoline on a fire.

Meanwhile, Trump does…nothing.
msn.com/en-us/news/wor…

Meanwhile, he prevents our president-elect from taking action to save our lives.

Meanwhile, @gsaEmily prevents the Biden administration from trying to save us from an absolute, staggering tragedy.
Republicans stand by and watch.

It’s not hyperbole to say people will die from this.

With exponential growth of cases, comes exponential growth of deaths.
cbsnews.com/news/texas-nat…

With exponential growth of cases comes exponential growth of hospitalizations.

https://twitter.com/saradannerdukic/status/1330188750278811649?s=20

With exponential growth of cases comes exponential strain on first responders.

Who will help us when there’s a fire? A car accident? When your baby has a febrile seizure?

How will we get a vaccine when there aren’t enough health care workers to perform even basic services?
theatlantic.com/health/archive…

How can the economy keep moving when 10,000 of us are dying every few days?
cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-…

Who wants to go to a restaurant or window shopping when bodies are literally piling up around us?

There’s a reason doctors and scientists are begging,
B-E-G-G-I-N-G us to
-not travel or gather for the holidays
-stay home
-wear a mask when we must go out

Please, listen to them.
theatlantic.com/health/archive…

This thread compiled here: twitter.com/i/moments/1330…