March 24: On the other side of the curve

More good news from Italy. The rate of increase of infections continues to go down. It's now 8.1% and finally on a decreasing trend down from the early days of staggering doubling times (see first graph). I am tempted to start deriving "lessons" for us... but I will refrain until this trend is confirmed w/o any doubt. All European countries have adopted "stay at home" and social distancing measures. Spain and Germany are pretty much tracking Italy's curve (showing so far that there wasn't anything "special" about Italy...except that it started earlier there. France is doing a bit better, and the US much worse than everybody else. Look at how steep the US curve is and consider that it has 6 times the population of Italy. That means plenty of room to go... and very fast... thus with huge overwhelm of the medical system. A decision to stop social distancing measures at this point can only make the situation much worse (one doesn't have to be an epidemiologist to come to that conclusion). Even if one decides to weigh the economic damage caused by "stay at home" policies, my purely personal opinion (but not just mine) is that the economy will not "get going" again while people will see death around them. People will not go shopping or on vacation etc. if they feel that their life is at risk. And I am not even touching on the moral issue. Our best chance to save the economy is to start saving lives. Gov Cuomo expressed that notion early today, together with a stunning plea for medical equipment. He has been articulating the problem very well!


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