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With the country on virtual lockdown and many, many unanswered questions about the Corona Virus, we thought it was a good idea to do a stand alone podcast with our good friend and the most knowledgeable medical person we know (and full disclosure: Ricochet Board Member), Dr. George Savage. Rob Long, and later, Peter Robinson ask the questions on this show, but later in the week, we'll open to the floor up to you and let you ask Dr. Savage. Stay tuned for a post soliciting questions. In the meantime, listen to this show and stay safe.
Discussion (15)
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Thanks for this podcast.
I find it very disappointing that Dr. Savage is talking about 33% exponential growth. I just debunked this as to Italy, here. It is true that exponential growth in the 33% range (per day) is fairly accurate for the first 5-10 days for many countries, but then it's been leveling out.
My point may be overly technical, as it does appear correct that cases grow in an exponential way early on, which means that the number can grow from, say, 200 to 10,000 pretty quickly. But the exponential growth does not continue.
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Jerry,
I wasn't making the point that exponential growth is inevitable, or that the rate of growth will remain at 33 percent-per-day indefinitely. Instead, I was trying to quantify the driver behind the ever more draconian shelter-in-place orders that US states and localities are imposing.
My specific observation was based on reporting done by the Financial Times (see graph nearby). You will note that the author normalized the data for each country, with the x-axis describing number of days since the 100th reported case and the y-axis showing total case numbers.
I think the jury is still out on the point of how long exponential growth can continue. China's case growth began decelerating after day 15 and South Korea's after day 10. This occurred after maximal effort at social distancing, which is the point of the current public health measures being taken in the US.
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Is that day 15 after everyone knew about the problem, or day 15 after China knew about it but kept it to themselves?
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This is of course 15 days after the 100th patient according to China's official reporting. So take it with a bit of salt.
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I think @PeterRobinson forgets that Trump has been in the forefront of saying that the US shouldn't rely on China so much. Maybe he can't be as vociferous about it right now, because China COULD restrict or totally cut off supplies of things that are badly needed especially now. (Saying we can just get those things from India, Japan, Korea, etc doesn't hold up because those places also get their supplies and raw materials from China.) Meanwhile, we have the Bidens and Sanderseses etc who don't think any "risky" manufacturing should take place in the US, which includes a lot of medical stuff, and especially the solar panels etc that the left insists are necessary for their Green New Deal/Green Economy.
And @RobLong assumes that Obama in the same situation would receive the same criticism as Trump for messing up a speech. I wonder, what color is the sky in Rob's world?
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