By this weekend, the US will surpass Italy in total infections. And by Monday, we will have close to 200k reported cases. I expect that in a not too distant future, the US will limit testing to only special cases (health workers and critical cases) to (1) lighten the burden on the system, and (2) to reduce social anxiety.
I am guessing/hoping that when the number is in 6 digits, it will scare the government enough to take flattening the curve seriously and scare the public enough to listen and follow the restrictions. IF that happens, then based on what I see from Italy and Spain, we can estimate that the daily transmission rate will drop by 14%, 4%, and 4%, over the next 3 weeks. The current rate is 1.3 (all numbers are approximations and the US is not good at testing and reporting anyway).
So the daily transmission rates over the next 4 weeks will be: 1.12, 1.07, 1.03, These rates will map to the following total number of cases:
April 6 = 442k,
April 13 = 710k,
April 20 = 875k
April 27 = Hurray, next week we'll be out of the woods
This is the optimistic projection based on decisive action in a week.
There are a number of ambiguities here. (1) My sample size is too small and every country is different. Maybe Americans will not listen the way Italians do. Or maybe they do a lot better. Or maybe Italy and Spain are too different to provide a roadmap. But this is the best I can come up with without spending too much time pouring over the data.
(2) I don't know how many cases are unaccounted for and are there but we don't know about. My guess is that by Monday the real number is ~500k. This will affect the projections big time.
(3) Maybe (not likely, but possible) the warming weather will help and there will be much lower transmission.
(4) Maybe mass hysteria takes hold and some people decide to hunker down in their church.
(5) And above all, maybe the authorities will just not act in a coordinated fashion we'll have 1 million cases by Easter Sunday.
It's really hard to tell because there are too many variables. But considering that some models and officials have estimated total infections of 25 M - 86 M, this projection maybe too optimistic. |
