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> Then we have to pick a reproduction rate, which I have no idea how to pick, so I'll say that it increases by 1.5x every day (so on day one you have x cases, then on day 2 you have x + 1.5x, then on day 3 you have x + 1.5x + (1.5)^2x, etc

> I know I've pulled these numbers out of my nether region and so they are likely very wrong. But with some back-of-the-envelope math, I think we can have some sick people in February without a lot of deaths.

Yeah, in two ways: That's not how the growth rate math works, but if we went by your math instead of the number, that's about 4-5x faster than what we were seeing in March.

A growth rate of 1.5 means if we had X cases on day 1, we'd have X(1.5^1) on day 2, and X(1.5^2) on day 3. This virus's growth rate at the beginning of the pandemic stage was around 1.4 (or to use your math, 0.4? I'm not sure what you meant by "(1.5)^2x", is that a typo of "(1.5^2)x" or did you mean 1.5^(2x)"? The second one is straight wrong).



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