Confirmed U.S. Coronavirus Cases Explode 520% in Just 4 Days
Americans finally woke up to the coronavirus outbreak's severity after the infection struck Tom Hanks and the NBA. | Source: AP Photo/John Minchillo
- Confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. exploded by 520% in just four days, while deaths rose by 245%.
- Assuming the same 520% rise every four days, there will be around 12 million coronavirus cases in the U.S. by April 1.
- Conservative estimates suggest around 136,000 deaths by May, so it’s time the U.S. government acted decisively.
Coronavirus cases in the United States have exploded by more than 500% in the past four days. They’ve risen from 213 confirmed cases on Sunday March 9, to 1,322 cases today.
Meanwhile, deaths have risen from 11 to 38 over the same period, a 245% increase.
Cases in America haven’t doubled in this short span of time. They haven’t tripled or quadrupled. No, they’ve quintupled, rising more than five times.
Yes, FIVE times. And given the exponential nature of the coronavirus’ spread, this rate may increase as more people are infected. So it’s time the complacent U.S. government did more than ban travel from Europe.
U.S. Coronavirus Cases Rise By 520% In Four Days
The coronavirus is coming for the U.S., and it’s not stopping.
According to data compiled by Oxford’s University World In Data project , there were 213 cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. on Sunday March 9. This is confirmed cases, by the way, so the actual number is likely to be higher.
Scarily, John Hopkins University’s CSSE center puts today’s number of confirmed U.S. cases at 1,322 .
Doing the math, this works out at an increase of 520.65%. Worryingly, this puts the United States near the top of the global leaderboard in terms of how quickly the coronavirus is spreading.
In fact, if you look at World In Data’s records (taken up to March 11), cases in the U.S. now double every two days.
By contrast, China’s cases are doubling every 30 days. Meanwhile, the global average for the doubling of coronavirus cases is 24 days.
Wait, because it gets worse. Assuming that coronavirus cases in the United States continue to increase by 520% every four days, we can calculate some very troubling figures – if the aggressive outbreak continues.
On Monday (March 16), the U.S. will have nearly 8,200 confirmed cases.
On March 20, the U.S. will have around 50,825 confirmed cases.
Then, on March 24, the U.S. will have roughly 315,150 cases.
And in the next four days, on March 28, the U.S. will have crossed the million-mark. That is, it will have about 1,954,000 confirmed cases.
Shall we go on? Yes, let’s do one more.
On April 1 — April Fools’ Day — the U.S. will be celebrating 12,115,000 cases. That’s 12 million.
Trump And The U.S Government Must Come Down Hard
Admittedly, this extrapolation assumes that confirmed cases will continue to grow steadily by 520% every four days. Still, more conservative estimates predict that the U.S. will have one million cases by the end of April , two million by May, and four million by May 13.
That’s still a lot of sick people. Clearly, President Donald Trump and the U.S. government need to act very quickly. Simply banning flights into the U.S. from mainland Europe won’t cut it. The coronavirus is already in the U.S. in sufficient numbers. It can spread by itself now. And given that every infected person infects 2.2 other people on average , it’s going to spread pretty quickly. Exponentially, as they say.
And not only will new cases grow exponentially, but so too will deaths. Already, the coronavirus has killed 38 people in the United States . Two days ago, this number stood only at 19. In other words, the death rate doubled in two days.
Basically, in two days the coronavirus will have killed 78 people in America. In another two days, 156. Then 312, 624, 1,248, 2,496, 4,992, 9,984, 19,968, 39,936, 79,872, 159,744, and so on.
Of course, assuming a linear progression like this is always a mistake. Particularly because, the more the coronavirus spreads, the less hospital systems will be able to help people.
At the very least, if there are four million coronavirus cases in the U.S. on May 13, there will be roughly 136,000 confirmed deaths, given the WHO’s current death rate of 3.4%.
The U.S government needs to get its act together.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.
