Our Case Number Keeps Climbing, Do We Need More Extreme Measures?

It's been 12 days since we started to impose extreme measures to stop the spread of COVID, and our number is still going up fast, even compared to other countries.

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As I explained previously,  we're seeing a big rise because we're doing many more tests.  We now have done more tests than any other country, even those who started dealing with COVID well before us. 

Notice how the slope of the test line matches the slope of our growth line?  The growth we're seeing is mostly the process of discovering people who had the virus before we started social distancing and other efforts.  To illustrate, take a look at this graph:

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The red line shows a possible number of cases that could have been in the US at the beginning of the month (it could be much more or somewhat less, but it will serve for this illustration).  The blue line shows the number of cases we've actually counted based on testing.   The space between them represents the "hidden cases" that are in the US but haven't been tested yet so aren't part of the count.  Notice how the red curve flattens after the extreme measures are taken.  This is also an estimate, but as I explained yesterday,  the curve DEFINITELY significantly flattened after that day.    The thing is we cant see it yet because we're still working through the volume of hidden cases.  In time, our testing will catch up with the actual number of cases and we'll see a rapid drop in the number of new cases, but until then we really can't see the effect of the shutdown. 

So do we really need to add even more extreme measures to stop the spread of COVID?  Maybe, but we really can't know just by looking at the rise in cases now.  

One more thing:  Although the red line continues to go up through the end of this graph,  if  you could see it a little further, you would see it start to curve down sharply because on average someone recovers from COVID 22 days from when they have symptoms. So on the same upward curve of new cases starting March 5th will be a downward curve of recovered cases starting March 27th.