Day 17: Daily Increase goes down to 22% and weekly average growth remains steady at 21%; 4 in 1,000 Georgians Carry the Virus

I have to admit that the numbers yesterday made it hard to see the silver lining in the cloud. But the number of new cases today was down to 831. The weekly average growth rate held steady at 21% (Fig 1). Georgia is still on an exponential growth curve, however. That means that the number of COVID-19 cases will double every 5 days. I don’t think that is where we want to be with over 9,000 cases by next Monday. People are simply not adhering to social distancing precautions. Atlanta grapples with residents defying the stay-at-home order. White County cracks down on illegal parking at Mt. Yonah. As the numbers get bigger they start to look scarier, yet to some it is business as normal. President Trump said yesterday that the peak of deaths in the U.S. might not come until the end of April. If people don’t practice social distancing, then it might be worse. The mortality rate is still 3%, but as the total goes up then the number of deaths also rises.

Remember the “invisible” contagion I wrote about yesterday. The assumptions from Scientific American are in my last post. That means today there are 45,428 people in Georgia who are not in the hospital and can spread the disease to others. That means 4 in every 1,000 Georgians are contagious with COVID-19. That number was 3 in 1,000 just yesterday. In my house we take our temperature twice daily, to check that none of us are sick. But still, we stay at home unless we need to go out. When we go out, we stay 6 feet or more away from strangers.

UPDATE: Gainesville, Georgia has issued a mandatory shelter-in-place order and is closing all non-essential businesses. Read the story which contains a link to the ordinance. Gun stores are deemed essential as are liquor stores. Hall County has NOT implemented a similar ordinance… yet.

In the category of too funny not to share is the story about the Houston, Texas mayor, Democrat Sylvester Turner, recommending that criminals stay home and stop committing crimes during the COVID-19 emergency. The story contains a precious video of his plea for criminals to “chill.”