Guys just like you, my life has been altered by this Corona virus, the official name of
it is SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes is called Covid-19. I wasn’t quite sure
2 weeks ago how serious a threat this is. And up until a few days ago I didn’t realize
the gravity of the consequences. The reality of what is about to happen hit
me like a ton of bricks when last week, a German mathematician by the name of Daniel
Regenberg contacted me to share his mathematical data on how many people are likely to get
infected, and ultimately how many lives may be lost. I read his entire paper which I translated
from German, thanks to Google. I was completely stunned by the data he showed me. In fact,
I was very skeptical and did not believe it. But when I checked his numbers against publicly
available data, and checked his math, I could not find any flaws. So I felt it was very important
to share this data. I asked him whether I could share it on my youtube channel, and
he agreed. He has also made a series of youtube videos with a lot more detail. And the link
to those is in the description below. Honestly, I am hoping that one of you can find a flaw
in the data, because what we are about to face not only in the United States but around
the world is just stunning. I don’t like alarmist takes on issues, but given the severity
of the situation, I’d rather share the data with you so that you can decide for yourself
whether you want to believe it.
I am hoping it is not as bad as the mathematics indicate, and in that case, you know, you guys can make
fun of me, when this is all over. I am willing to be ridiculed, if I can help save even one
person from getting sick. And I want to emphasize that in this video
I am looking at this virus from a largely mathematical point of view, not biological.
So here’s what Daniel shared with me. First I want you to understand, that unless
you live in Antarctica, this virus is going to affect you. It will hit you or someone
that you know. And it will hit hard. It may already be there, and you just don’t know it.
Second, the official number of cases that you are seeing and the number of fatalities
is misleading. There is a huge lag in these numbers.
Third, in the United States,
a few weeks from now, our healthcare system here is likely to be overwhelmed, and
could potentially collapse. We in the United States appear to be on the Italy-like trajectory.
In Italy right now, medical professionals are deciding life and death decision on who
gets care, and who gets saved by a respirator.
21 thousand people have died in the world as of March 25th, and this is probably the
tip of the iceberg. The good news is that in some places, like
South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and parts of China, unprecedented control measures seem
to be working, so the spread of the virus happens to be slowed, and hopefully
even stopped. There is a sequence of events that occurs,
and there is a certain lag at each step. The sequence goes something like this:
People get infected, days later they get sick, days later they may get tested if their symptoms
require it as judged by a doctor, days later they may need to be hospitalized, and days
later, they may die. So even if we were to completely stop the spread right now, many
more people will still be getting sick from having been infected previously.
An interesting thing is that
You would expect that the virus might grow at different rates in different countries
because of various reasons such as climate, demographics, social interactions. But surprisingly,
the numbers are quite consistent for just about every society, every country.
The growth rate of infections is anywhere from 25% to 30% per day everywhere you look.
Let’s just use an average of 27%, in the middle. This means that every three days, the number of people
getting infected with the virus doubles – that’s just simple math according to this equation.
So in the united states, the number of infected
people as of March 25th is about 62,000. In 10 days, it's going to be about
ten times this number or about 675,000. And in another 10 days, it will be 10X that number or
7.3 million, And in 10 days it will be 80 million after that. So in one month the number increases
about 1300 times. Again, this is for unmitigated growth if nothing is done. Now thankfully,
In the United States, I think most people do seem to be taking social distancing seriously.
So perhaps, the actual numbers of infections will be less.
But here’s the important point to remember, a university of Massachusetts, Amherst study
shows that the median incubation period for the virus is about 5 days, and about 98% of
people with symptoms show it within 12 days. So there are people carrying the virus right
now, that do not show any symptoms. So the actual numbers of infected are likely to be much
higher than the 62,000 that we see today. So if we take the latest numbers of infected people,
from the Johns Hopkins University dashboard, which is 62,000 as of March 25, this means that the real
number of infected people is about 250,000, which we will likely see in about a week from now.
The math also tells us that every week, the virus will infect about 5X as many people. So in a month,
the infection numbers will be more than 1000X the current number.
This is sobering. If we do not all make some sacrifices in terms of doing our part to stay
socially isolated, the number of infected people in the US could soar.
Now, is there any good news? How can this virus be contained? Now here are some ways we contain
it, and stop perhaps a huge number of our people from getting sick:
- Lockdown the population with social distancing and mandatory shelter-in-place. Many
parts of the country are already doing this. And with this, we can keep our system from being overrun.
It should be a national order.
- Massive testing and isolation of people. If we don't test people, we don't know that they are sick.
And we have to know that they are sick, in order to isolate them.
Herd immunity. Now, this is interesting. If enough people get sick,
then the virus has nowhere else to go. But of course, this is a worst case scenario because
it means that just about everyone that could get infected, got infected. And this, according experts,
is about 70% of the population, which would 228 million people in the US. There could be a vaccine or medicine that treats this virus.
But indications are that this is at least one year away. Vaccines are just not made that quickly.
- Warmer weather may slow down the virus. There is some data that shows that corona
viruses tend to not be as virulent in the summer months. But Australia,which is on the
tail end of summer does not seem to be bucking any of the world trends. So this hope is questionable.
Daniel believes, and I don’t see a reason to disagree with him on this, if we don’t all
take action now on a personal, community, and national level, within a month to two,
the number of people infected world-wide may be counted in billions, not millions.
When will we know that the numbers have peaked? There is something called an inflection point in
this exponential curve. We need to look at the numbers of new cases every day, then the
ratio between the number of new cases today vs. yesterday. So if this ratio starts to come
down, we will be closer to the inflection point. And when it gets to 1 over successive
days, then we will be on our way to a leveling off.
But even after we level off, we have to remain isolated, because you have to remember the
lag time of 5-12 days. There will likely be a significant number of people who have the
virus but are not showing any symptoms, and could be very infectious.
Let’s look at some scenarios. The best case scenario is that the we put in strict controls
for social isolation, test and identify those that are infected, and take strict quarantine
measures not only for the person infected, but also anyone that may have come into contact
with that person for at least the past 11 days. If we do this, the virus will be contained. This
can be done as is being demonstrated in countries like Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and China. The virus
could also mutate and die out. This happened with SARS and MERS. And of course, we could
develop a vaccine. But even if we fast-tracked it, we're looking at
6-8 months if we're really lucky. And we don’t have 6-8 months. The worst case is not easy to talk about.
But we have to talk about it and be aware of what could happen. If we do not contain
this virus and remain on the trajectory that we are currently on, if people do not take
social distancing seriously, or start going back to work too soon, the virus could spread
uncontrollably until it infects as many people as possible, until we reach crowd immunity
This would mean that about 70% of the population gets infected.
This is not an exaggeration. International experts from both the US, and abroad agree on this
number. This amounts to 228 million people out of a total population of 327 million,
just in the united states. How many fatalities would this mean? The official
fatality rate from the World Health Organization is 3.4%. But it appears to be 1% in developed
countries with typical demographics, and a good healthcare system. But more like 4% when they system
is overwhelmed. This means on the low end,at a 1% fatality rate, the number of deaths
would be about 2.3 million. And if our healthcare system gets overwhelmed, we are looking at
9 million fatalities. But long before that happens, the US healthcare
system would be overwhelmed. Even though the US has more hospital beds per capita than
most other countries, a total of about 1 million, out of those, only about 100,000 of
them are ICU or intensive care beds. And as many as 1 million people may need ICU care
at the same time. And an even larger number of people may need ventilators.
In 2010, the total number of ventilators available in the US was only about 62,000. We need ventilators
fast – within 2 weeks, or hospitals will have no choice but start deciding who gets
a ventilator and who does not. This could mean the hospital decides who lives and who
doesn’t. US is far behind currently in testing, and
has done only a fraction of the tests per capita as Canada and most other European countries.
We appear to be on a path similar to Italy right now.
So it is not looking good. And there is talk by some government officials that people should
start going back to work to save the economy. This would be a calamity! We need to work
together because we are in this together. Let’s take care of ourselves, and let’s
take care of each other.