My only concern is the exponential growth they are reporting. I'm concerned but not fearful of what's to come. We need to stay rational and logical in what we do. This statement I just made about "rational and logical" I'm fearful of because we've all seen the chaos play out right in front of us.

A simple explanation of exponential growth that nobody believes is taking a penny and doubling it each day for a month. At the end of the month you're a millionaire.

I did this demonstration for my math classes each year when we would start discussing exponential growth. For the first three weeks of the month you see very little growth in your penny doubling. By the end of week 4 the numbers give you over $1 million. Example of the demonstration below.

Now do the same exponential growth for the situation we're in. The numbers are very low now but 3 weeks down the road it will be a completely different case.

Double a penny for a month scenario.

Day 1: $.01
Day 2: $.02
Day 3: $.04
Day 4: $.08
Day 5: $.16
Day 6: $.32
Day 7: $.64
Day 8: $1.28
Day 9: $2.56
Day 10: $5.12
Day 11: $10.24
Day 12: $20.48
Day 13: $40.96
Day 14: $81.92
Day 15: $163.84
Day 16: $327.68
Day 17: $655.36
Day 18: $1,310.72
Day 19: $2,621.44
Day 20: $5,242.88
Day 21: $10,485.76
Day 22: $20,971.52
Day 23: $41,943.04
Day 24: $83,886.08
Day 25: $167,772.16
Day 26: $335,544.32
Day 27: $671,088.64
Day 28: $1,342,177.28
Day 29: $2,684,354.56
Day 30: $5,368,709.12

The good people of the country are being shouted down by clowns. Politicians need to feel pressure to stop destroying people's lives and wealth. Shameful acts of cowardice

Ya, we're at day 62 in the US (first case was Jan 20th). We passed the population of the Earth up back on day 34.

So you think the US will do a much,much worse job of dealing with the virus than China did? Because the only new cases China is reporting is a handful of outsiders who brought it in from other countries. Life is pretty much back to normal over there.

They literally barricaded people in their houses/apartments.

We have rights and unfortunately a bunch of selfish retards as well.

Yes Americans are going to have to VOLUNTARILY be smart to avoid spreading it. China FORCED it's citizens to be smart.

China filled a building with sick then collapsed it.

Absolutely the US will do much worse than China. We already have more cases on a per captia basis than China. There is very little upside to a communists dictatorship, but one of them is the ability to completely and totally control a population. What we are doing here in the states is little more than a gentile suggestion on sheltering in place in a few locations throughout the country. China did a hard lock down on 750 million people. They also track peoples every move via their cell phones and if they've been near an infected person, they go straight into forced quarantine. The used to let you quarantine at home, but now they throw you into what basically amounts to a concentration camp for 14 days. So no, I do not think the US will do a better job than the Chinese.

China is STILL lying.

A couple things to note here:

1. The virus is not doubling every day. It's doubling every 3-4 days right now. Hopefully social distancing slows it further.
2. Exponential growth doesn't usually start with the first case. If there's just one case, it's pretty easy to get that person isolated and then isolate the people they've been in contact with. Exponential growth starts when you get enough people with the virus that it becomes impossible to know who else has been exposed. This is the definition of "community transmission" which essentially means people are getting it in the community from an unknown source. Most regions in the world have now hit this point, but in the US, we really just got there about 1.5-2 weeks ago.

Appreciate the informed comments of JPurdue and CCTX. Need more like them.

First death in the US was about a month ago,only about 250-300 deaths since. Dont sound like "doubling daily" to me.

This is why I said this was a "Simple Explanation." Exponential growth is different in every scenario. What I wanted to explain is that you don't see dramatic growth until later in the scenario.

Look at the simple diagram. The numbers are not dramatically changing until day 24-25.

Again this was a simple explanation, not the scenario that's affecting our country. I'm by no means saying we will reach 1 million deaths, only listing a simple diagram of how exponential growth works. Take it with a grain of salt.

Ok, I'll use your numbers. Doubling every 3-4 days and going for 3 weeks puts us at under 200 cases in the entire US. The math everyone is spewing isn't making sense. That's all I'm saying. What is the magical number to hit the exponential growth rate?

Yes, this is a potentially deadly virus (look at Italy), but what is being said and reported, is not what is actually happening. Nobody has any clue as to the number of infected. All we can do is look at what has happened in other countries that are farther along in this than us. Italy has had almost 5000 deaths out of a population of 60 million. 1/12,0000 people are dying from it. South Korea, 104 deaths out of 51 million or 1/490,000. Which model do we go off of?

I share some of your same outlook on it. The media is not focusing on the fact that of the people told they have Coronavirus that 98% are not critical or in serious condition. There are 700ish people have serious to critical diagnosis and that 2% number seems to be falling in that category.

I think its like most subjects, arguments can be made for either but they sure seem to only focus on whatever seems worst case right now.