Editorial: Bay Area can slow COVID-19 pandemic if we remain united

OK, Bay Area residents, take a deep breath. This coronavirus pandemic just got real for all of us. For our health and to save lives, we need everyone to keep calm and remain united. We can do this.

On Monday afternoon, health officers from seven Bay Area counties — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz — ordered us to stay home for the next 22 days unless we’re conducting essential activities or providing essential services.

You can take the dog for a walk, go for a hike or leave to care for a family member. Police and firefighters will remain on the job. Grocery stores, gas stations, hardware stories, banks and health care providers can remain open. Restaurants can only serve take-out. Many businesses will be forced to close their doors.

Sound draconian? Perhaps. But it’s necessary. And it’s essential that we all cooperate. To stop the coronavirus from turning into an uncontrolled crisis that overwhelms our health care systems, we must — must — “flatten the curve.”

For those of you who haven’t yet heard the expression, let us explain why it’s such a critical concept: The virus spreads in social settings. It’s not just multiplying, it is expanding exponentially. That means, for example, that you might have 5 cases in Week 1, 25 in Week 2 and 125 in Week 3.

Graph that and it’s a line that curves upward at a pace that our health care providers — doctors, nurses, hospitals — cannot accommodate. People will literally die because they can’t get the help they need.

At the current pace, without intervention, according to one model developed by the New York Times working with infectious disease epidemiologists, roughly a third of Americans — more than 100 million people — could become infected with the virus. More than 9 million people would be sickened at one time and 1 million could die.

We must make sure that doesn’t happen. Coronavirus is 10 times more lethal than seasonal flu. We must slow the spread of COVID-19. If we can do that, if we can flatten the curve, if we can tamp down the growth of infections to one our health care system can handle, we will save lives.

We can stop the pandemic from ravaging our region and do our part to slow the spread in California and the nation. But that requires that we act now. And the sooner we act, the better the outcome.

That is why we are being asked to stay home. Now.

This won’t be easy for any of us. It will be especially scary for those who fear for loss of job or income. And for our children, who, like many of us, will struggle to comprehend what is going on. This is a time for special compassion — toward those close to us and toward ourselves.

The Bay Area, unfortunately, is one of the epicenters of this pandemic. We can meet this generational challenge. We can do this.

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