updated graphs with Georgia’s new cases/deaths, 25 Mar

Yesterday I ran the numbers comparing Georgia to Italy and now Spain’s trajectory. I’m sure if you run the numbers for your state, or for the United States as a whole, they will all tell you the same thing:

As of March 24th, we are one day out from being when Italy and Spain locked down.

Spain was not somehow different than Italy. We are not somehow different than Italy.

The analysis is straightforward. Scale Spain and Italy’s numbers by population to match Georgia’s (Spain: ~47 million, Italy: ~60 million, GA: ~10 million). Then shift their lines to match ours, by moving their dates. I’ve marked the relative dates once on the axis. Here’s Georgia’s numbers so far (24 March). We have the exact same type of exponential trajectory as Spain and Italy.

Update: New GA bars in Green | 27 Mar. Analysis by nouyang. For interactive, see this spreadsheet.

Here’s what happens when you include the data for the rest of Italy and Spain. Yes, that’s where we’re going to be in two weeks (plus or minus a few days), Georgia alone will have 100+ people dying every day, or about a thousand people dying in a week.

Update: New GA bars in green, 27 Mar | Hopefully not too confusing, remember that on the graph itself (not overlaid arrows), dates and # of people are scaled and translated to match Georgia. Analysis by nouyang — use freely, public domain. For interactive, see this spreadsheet.

Note also the single week of delay between Italy/Spain and China’s response will cost thousands of lives (and also prolong the economic crisis). The same data in tabular form as below:

Update: New GA stats in red | Click to enlarge. Analysis by nouyang. For interactive, see this spreadsheet.

Our nation’s leaders seem intent on doing less and waiting even longer than Spain and Italy, which I find very dangerous.

Like many of you, three weeks ago I thought “more people die from the flu.” Then I ran the numbers for GA’s hospital capacity and what it would look like if everyone came into the hospital at the same time.

GA hospital capacity. Analysis by nouyang.

Yes, in Georgia, a population of 10 million people has seven thousand available hospital beds. A key realization is that most hospital beds are in use already (at minimum, 70%).

My analysis is shown in the image. It is shockingly simple — you can follow along on your smartphone’s calculator. I’ve had more difficult math problems in high school, I’m not sure what the governor is doing.

GA hospital capacity. Analysis by nouyang. Sources in [] for each assumption can be found at end of this post.

Note that ICU beds, PPE, ventilators, are all likely to be in much shorter supply, so this is me being optimistic / keeping the analysis simple. Also, of course we cannot remain in shutdown for years. We will have to massively increase our bed capacity as well as pursue the widespread containment, testing, and contact tracing other countries have done. But the shutdown buys us time, isolating hotspots, get tests, get masks, equipment.