A lot of people focused on the number of people who were infected and who died from Coronavirus, especially when the number was low. And didn’t focus on the more important issue of how quickly those numbers doubled.

Here’s how quickly 1 of anything can become millions. https://twitter.com/thevaluesvoter/status/1248852669650919424

Yesterday was the 80th day after the first #Covid19 case was diagnosed in the US. Up to now, the number of confirmed cases has doubled, on average, every four days. The death toll has doubled, on average, every three days. Probably because the testing has been sparse.

People took a false and dangerous sense of comfort in the fact that the number of cases was low as recently as the beginning of March. Even now I hear people say that there aren’t “that many” cases near them. That’s not the point here.

If you take one of ANYTHING and constantly double it every couple of days, it’s going to remain a somewhat low number for a while. But then it’s going to take off like a rocket. That’s how exponential growth works.

Since I’m quarantined and you’re still reading, an example:

One of ANYTHING (not specifically Coronavirus), doubled every three days:

Day 1 - 1
Day 4 - 2
Day 7 - 4
Day 10 - 8
Day 13 - 16
Day 16 - 32
Day 19 - 64
Day 22 - 128
Day 25 - 256
Day 28 - 512
Day 32 - 1,024
Day 35 - 2,048
Day 38 - 4,096
Day 41 - 8,192

Day 44 - 16,384
Day 47 - 32,768
Day 50 - 65,536
Day 53 - 131,072
Day 56 - 262,144
Day 59 - 524,288
Day 62 - 1,048,576
Day 65 - 2,097,152
Day 68 - 4,194,304
Day 71 - 8,388,608
Day 74 - 16,777,216
Day 77 - 33,554,432
Day 80 - 67,108,864

In 80 days, if you have one of ANYTHING and constantly double it every three days, you’ll end up with 80 million.

That’s NOT a Coronavirus projection, thankfully.

That’s just simple math if something were constantly doubled on a constant basis every three days.

That’s why, if you’re thinking to yourself, there’s only 50 cases here, you’re looking at it wrong. That’s more than enough cases to get everybody in your state sick if people are all up around each other and not taking precautions such as social distancing.

The point is, the raw number doesn’t matter. What matters is how fast that number is growing.

1 case 81 days ago has turned into 507,000 confirmed cases and nearly 20,000 deaths.

Take this seriously!