How bad will the coronavirus be for your country?

The implicit perception that most habitants and governments of Europe and America have regarding the Coronavirus is: “we won’t be touched as much as China and Italy, because our country can react better / has a better healthcare system / has a younger population.”

First, I want to make sure that you know what happened in Italy and when. Below is an approximate timeline with rounded numbers.

Day 0 – 21 Feb – 20 cases – We notice the outbreak.
Day 2 – 23 Feb – 150 cases – Closed schools, 11 cities in quarantine.
Day 10 – 1 Mar – 1700 cases – First hospitals saturated.
Day 11 – 2 Mar – 2040 cases – 10% of Lombardy doctors are sick or in isolation.
Day 17 – 8 Mar – 7400 cases – Lombardy & 14 provinces in lockdown, 12 million people affected, first reports of patients who cannot get care, prison riots.
Day 19 – 10 Mar – 10150 cases – All Italy in lockdown.
Day 21 – 12 Mar – 15000 cases – Most retail shops closed in all of Italy, enforced isolation, army given police powers.

There are two ways to check where your country is on the timeline. The first one is to compare the number of confirmed cases. For example, as of today, the US would be around Day 10.

The second one is to compare the government reaction. For example, as of today, the US would be around Day 1.

If your country’s timeline is more advanced in the first case than in the second one, as it’s the case for the US, chances are you’ll have it worse than Italy.

To get it better than Italy, your country has to beat Italy’s timeline. It’s as simple (or hard) as that.

Please note that from the moment your country goes into full lockdown, the cases will still grow about 100x. That’s because it takes time for the effects to show. Look at Wuhan: it got quarantined when there were 600 cases, and there are now 62000 in Hubei, and that’s considered a success. (Yes, I know, Chinese data is probably underestimating the number of cases. But so is your country’s data.)

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Things go fast, we’ve always been one step behind, it cost Italy so much.
Unless your country beats this timeline, it’ll end up the same. If it’s behind, it will even be worse.

It doesn’t matter if your country has a younger population – the hospital overcrowding will be similar.

It doesn’t matter if your country has more hospital beds – what matters is ICU beds.

It doesn’t matter if your country has more ICU beds – they will get overcrowded, no matter how many, unless you implement social distancing now.

(I discuss the above in yesterday’s night chat with Gumroad’s founder Sahil Lavingia, here)

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In my book “100 Truths You Will Learn Too Late” (you can buy it here) I wrote: