Not a billion dollar business but rather large nonetheless, True Food Kitchen, a company that my sone works for in Austin, has shut down it's restaurants nationwide and has delayed all new openings including the one at Easton that was to open April 8 Oprah has a financial interest in the company. Seriously doubt that she's falling for a hoax. Agreed Billy, laughable.

It's difficult to curb their hormones at their age.

I also find it interesting that when the White House and DeWine give briefings on the situation, everybody on the dais is shoulder-to-shoulder. No six feet of separation there.

I've been wondering about potential unexpected benefits out of all of this. One that I can think of is a possible slowing of global warming (another one of those "hoaxes"), at least in the short term. With a huge cutback in jet and motor vehicle traffic worldwide, we should see a significant reduction in CO2 emissions this year.

Where people get lost in thinking about problems like Coronavirus is that, for most people, it's not natural to think in terms of exponential functions; instead, we think linearly. Thus, if there are 100 deaths so far in the US, and this has been going on now for a month and a half, then by the end of April we'll be at 200, a tiny number compared to the flu, right?

Wrong. Epidemics actually follow Farr's Law, which is a bell curve, but in the early days, until, say 20-30% of the population has been infected, that is very similar to an exponential function. How does that work? The US had 35 cases on 2/23. The US had 321 cases on 3/5, so it took about 12 days to go up 10 times. On 3/15 it had 3777 cases, so it went up another 10 times in 9 days. Let's use ten days for the time to go up 10x.

If they US were simply to ignore it, and just let it take it's natural course, since the US currently has 5,723 cases, on March 27th it would have about 57,000 cases. By April 6 there would be 570,000 cases. By April 16th 5.7 million cases, and by April 26th, 57 million cases (actually less, because by then it would start to deviate to a bell curve, and no longer follow the exponential curve).

What would that mean for deaths? In a best case scenario, of optimal health care, it seems that deaths can be held down to about 1%. However, if the healthcare system becomes overloaded, and has to start just ignoring patients and letting them die, as happened in Wuhan and Italy, and as it starting to happen in Spain, not surprisingly, the death rate shoots much higher. In Italy it is currently 8%. In Wuhan it was running 6%. In Iran it is 6%. Spain is at 4.4% and climbing.

Once the US gets over about 50,000 cases, the hospital systems in some areas will be over capacity. By 1-200,000 cases, that will be true virtually everywhere. Thus, if the US chooses to simply ignore it, and decides that sporting events, and the right to dine out and visit bars is more important than the public health, the foreseeable end is some 60 million cases, and 5 million dead, and there really isn't any debate about that. Is 60 million cases a ridiculous number? There are typically 60m flu cases a year, so why would 60m Covid19 cases be unexpected?

So, which is a greater cost to society, and the economy? Closing bars and restaurants and businesses and temporarily crushing the economy, or letting millions die, and millions and millions get sick, some very sick, with perhaps permanent lung damage to retain as a memory?

As for the "it's just like the flu", well, um, no. 60 million people do get the flu every year, of which 20,000 die. It is perfectly possible for 60 million to get this, too, but the death toll would many magnitudes higher. It is very, very unlike the flu. But, but, but most will recover... Sure, 90% would recover, but of those, 10% would take 1-2 months to do so, and the rest 2 weeks minimum. The regular flu is much quicker.

Am I saying that 5 million are going to die? Absolutely not. We aren't going to let that happen. We are going to cancel large gatherings. We are going to wash our hands frequently. We are going to practice social distancing. And we are going to reduce the rate of spread dramatically, which will flatten the curve so that the hospitals don't get overloaded. That in turn will lower the death rate to probably between 1 and 2%. And, why are we going to do these things? Because the consequences of the alternative are too awful to even consider any other course of action. We don't need to repeat the disaster in Italy. We can learn from their mistakes, and do much, much better.

Oh, and what of the argument that "we don't need to do anything... it will vanish with summer"? Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I'm not optimistic. Supposing that I told you that the growth rate in new cases over the last week, in the following areas has been:
South America: 38.3% a day increase
Caribbean Islands: 34.0% a day increase
Central America: 32.8% a day increase
North America: 30.3% a day increase
Africa (except N. Africa): 30.2% a day increase
Europe: 22.6% a day increase
North Africa: 20.6% a day increase
Middle East 11.3% a day increase

OK, maybe it doesn't spread as fast in hot dry climates, but is still summer in the southern hemisphere, and it is spreading even faster there than it is here.

And, for those that don't grasp the seriousness of this, here's an article from the WSJ about the situation in Italy:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/every-day-you-lose-the-conta...

And, here's are more pieces of data to process:
1. China still reports 2622 patients in serious or critical condition. In the last month they have only reported about 4000 new cases. Thus, the vast majority of those in serious and critical condition have been hospitalized for over a month.
2. In cases outside of China, there have been 5035 deaths. There have also been 13,288 patients who have been declared as recovered. Thus, 27.5% of the cases that have been resolved outside of China have been resolved with a fatality. Does that mean 27.5% of people will die? No. It means that those that die, die fairly quickly, usually in about 2 weeks, while those that will recover have a very long struggle before they do, on average about 35-40 days.

I think that that they have ramped up their immune systems with something that has not come to market yet. Crazy opinion, but I believe it because Trump is still shaking hands with people, both he and Pence have come in contact with three people who have contracted the virus.

As expected, there has been an explosion in the number of confirmed cases this week. US confirmed cases are currently 9269, double the 4667 as of Monday night. If cases were to double every two days for the remainder of the month we would be over 1m cases by the end of the month. Is that likely? What is going on?

The answer is that the US finally has testing capability, and all the people with symptoms, who have been suspected cases, but who could not be tested before, are being tested. Once the testing backlog has been completed, the rate will slow substantially.

Also, all the actions to shut things down, and increase social distances will have an effect, too, but not right away. The time for symptoms to appear, and to reach the point at which people get tested is typically 4-14 days, probably averaging about 9. Since the changes started at the beginning of this week, by a week from today, we should start seeing a dramatic slowing in the rate of new cases. I'm hoping they drop to about 15% a day by next week, and half of that a week later.

If we can follow a sequence something like: 1.3,1.27,1.24,1.22,1.2,1.18,1.15,1.13,1.11,1.1,1.09,1.08,1.07

That would hold us to 65,500 cases by the end of the month, and hopefully only about 1100 deaths. Then, if we can keep the rate low, say 3% a day in April, and less in May, we can end up with only perhaps another 100k cases a month for awhile, and perhaps 1600 deaths a month. At that rate, by this time next year there would be a total of 1.3 million cases and 20,000 deaths, so it would end up being comparable to the flu in deaths, though far, far lower in total cases.

But, and here's a bright spot: In the process of stopping the transmission of COVID19, we will seriously put a crimp in the transmission of every major disease. We may see only 1m flu cases over the next year, instead of the usual 60m, and we may see only 300 deaths to the regular flu. Colds will also be a lot less common as well.

Until Biden is elected and sworn in (according to all the new odds updated).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackjones/2020/03/16/odds-fa...

I can tell from dramatic jumps in new cases being reported the last couple days, plus anecdotal evidence, that the level of testing is much higher than it was a week ago. I'm guessing they will catch up on the people who need testing very quickly, provided that they don't run out of swabs. The swabs come from a company called Copan, in a hard hit part of Italy. The Air Force just flew 50,000 of them in from Italy on Monday, though, and they are being distributed across the country.

It wouldn't shock me a bit if the numbers spike in bit in the next 2-3 weeks after the Spring Breakers in Texas and Florida come back home and potentially get family members sick.

Unfortunately, lots of these stubborn hipsters that can't stay off the beach for one spring one time will miss living the rest of their life if they end up 6 feet under. Hope it was worth it for a week of fun and games in the sun. Tickets to Vampire Weekend concerts next year will end up going for like $2 each when there are no hipsters left to buy tickets.

And they will all respond in unison... "OK BOOMER" as they puke and die.

And the phrase "OK Boomer" isn't limited to just hipsters, its pretty much used by all millennials. Can't say I blame them when bad things are always blamed on our generation.

One small bit of good news is that the stupid kid from Milford who is all over the news due to his spring break interview is not an Ohio student. I was worried when I saw he was wearing a green ball cap backwards. Turns out his parents are Ohio alums but he is pursuing a career in rap music. :)

Michigan’s cases went up by 300% yesterday, New York’s cases went up 115% and New Jersey’s (where we have an insider who said it is a hoax to get federal money) cases went up 165% yesterday. If we all stay home and follow the guidelines for 14 days most that are sick will be able to get tested and quarantine and we can stop the exponential spreading of the virus.