It’s Time To Stay Home

If you have the disease and don’t know it yet, now is a very very bad time to spread it inadvertently. The people you infect will, if they must go to the hospital, be a part of the epidemic curve that overwhelms the hospital.

If you don’t have the disease, now is a very very bad time to catch it, because you will be part of the big wave.

TL;DR: The transmissions that will swamp our hospital systems are about to begin. STAY HOME. For as long as you can.

Many have seen this time-adjusted graph of the numbers, with the time shifted so it’s clear just how similar the curves look.

I’m posting this on March 11th. The incubation period is around 5 days.

The reports from Italy about their overwhelmed hospitals began March 8th; some of their hospitals were already swamped at that point.

If we were 11.5 days behind Italy on March 9th, but Italian hospitals hit saturation, oh, call it March 6th, then our hospitals will start suffering on March 17th/18th. 5 days to develop symptoms, 24 hours for them to get bad enough to go to the hospital.

The Critical Window Is Here

Starting today, March 11th, if you leave the house, you are taking a significantly higher risk of being in a hospital during the surge.

If you have left the house (and let’s be realistic about how often you touched your face and you probably touched doorknobs), if you leave your house now and develop symptoms tomorrow, anyone you infect today who needs medical care will be in the hospital during the surge.

I’m not leaving my house.