2020-03-21 COVID-19 AM Update

For the last few days we’ve been preparing internal reports twice a day for staff. We’ve decided to release these publicly to help you plan.

US cases are up to 19,800 from about 14,300 yesterday AM and 18,100 yesterday PM. We won’t stop repeating this: known will continue to rise until we have figured out testing.

So why do we only look at new cases instead of total cases? Think of it as the speed of a car, the number of active cases today is your speed, you know how fast you are going. The number of new cases tells you if you are accelerating or decelerating. Right now, we are accelerating at an accelerating rate.

The rate of change in new cases went down overnight: the curve above is less steep, but we think that there is just a lag in getting new test results in.

Connecticut joined NY, CA and IL in telling people to stay at home. The nature of each of these orders changes in the details but are similar on the whole.

I don’t have time to dig into the testing data this morning but let me give you a summary of what I’m seeing. While US tests are over 100,000 as a whole, individual states are all over the board. NY has tested 33,000, CA 11,800, WA 23,000, TN 800, MO 440, AL 130, GA 2,300.

There are two significant issues with this. First, it is really going to hamper our response as a nation because we don’t know where the cases are, it will drag the shutdowns out. Second, it gives policymakers and the public an inaccurate picture of how things really are.

To depart from data from a moment, we don’t believe for a moment that TN only has 228 cases or that Knox County only has 6. Knoxville sits at the intersection of 75 & 40 and Sevierville hasn’t really shutdown yet. Between the traffic of those two regional intersections, I can’t believe that we don’t have dozens or hundreds of cases.

We say this so that you don’t have additional fear when the cases roll in after testing really gets underway in TN. Remember that the cases just bring visibility to reality.

If these updates are helpful to you do us a favor and like the post wherever you saw it posted. Also, if you have a question feel free to put that up, we’ll answer it if we feel we have enough internal expertise.