I have a wait and see attitude. I am going to try to protect myself, friends and loved ones and to observe good hygene during the quarantine, until the disease is under control. We won't know how bad the illness will hit all of us until this is over, thus I am withholding my judgment until after. In the meantime, short of locking myself in my bedroom, I am doing what I can to prevent myself catching this.
Once the rate of infection slows, we will be able to start rationally talking about ending the social distancing. If we stop social distancing before that we are playing Russian Roulette. And we aren't even close to seeing the infection rate drop off. Scientists have proof that the virus normally increases at a rate of doubling every three days. This is doubling every three days would look like:
On March 17, there were around 1,000 cases in the US.
By March 20 that would have been 2,000.
By March 23 6,000.
By March 26, 12,000
But the US is experiencing more than a doubling every three days: Instead, we went from around 1,000 cases on March 17 to over 80,000 cases nine days later. That would mean we are seeing a doubling nearly every day. Because we know this virus has traditionally doubled every three days likely we are seeing the increased numbers because we are only now starting widespread testing. That means it is possible there are a lot more people infected than the current numbers show.
If we assume the 80,000 is a good number, here is what the doubling every three days going forward will look like:
March 27, 80,000
March 30, 160,000
April 2, 320,000
April 5, 640,000
April 8, 1.28 million
April 16, 2.56 million
If the social distancing slows the spread, we will know fairly soon because the numbers will not double every three days, and once the rate of new infections starts to be slower than the day before, we will be going in the right direction. Before that happens any talk of ending social distancing and getting back to business as normal will waste any gains we have made to slow the spread.
The better we all are about social distancing and not exposing ourselves and loved ones to the virus, the more quickly the disease spread will slow and the more quickly we can all get back to our normal lives.
Because we won't know how bad this is going to get until it is over, anything except extreme social distancing and aggressive measures to stop its spread will be to surrender our country to the virus without a realistic idea of how bad that could turn out.
