Hitting the Wall

The Coronavirus has hit us like a "brick wall across an expressway" as Douglas Adams put it.  I say that because it happened because, while we were licensed drivers in control of our car we weren't looking at the clear and present danger that our experts sitting frightened in the passenger seat were telling us was around the corner.

Probably, we were looking at our phones.

As it has happened, I had just previously taken the opportunity of a career change to construct a SaaS financial service targeting cryptocurrency traders - so I'd been expecting to work from home for several months.  My children were either left home and independent or already capable of studying entirely independently.  My wife's work is in an essential service - she is protected and remains fully employed.  We are lucky.

So: what is happening?  What is going to happen?

The analogy of the Brick Wall was intentional. What we're experiencing is the feeling of the exponential.

It is human nature to try to get used to your situation: there's a shocking event - hitting you like a wall.  You reconcile what has happened, postulate causes and then, subconsciously or explicitly extrapolate to what is likely to happen next.  You can then re-establish a sense of comfort, make plans based on the new expectations - and move on.
But this doesn't work with an exponential, because once you hit the wall, the scale changes, and there's just another wall waiting for you.

To this point the events and consequent adjustments have been: an epidemic in Wuhan - concerning; a few cases in Italy and Iran - poor them, hope they can contain it; a few cases all over the place - maybe we should stockpile essentials; Italy falling apart; everywhere falling apart; impending years of global economic decline.  Each stage was concerning, each significantly worse than the last.  So: what next?

It's hard to distinguish pessimism from realism.  Well, let's try to be objective, based on numbers.
I know so far of just one person who has the disease - a friend's sister: she had it mildly and seems to have recovered.  She was an educator of students who had been in contact with patients.  In Europe, where I am, the number of cases is currently doubling every 3 or 4 days.  So next week I should know of about 5 people with the disease and the week after about 20.  If it keeps going, by the end of April I should know... about 1300 with the disease.  That couldn't be right, could it?

My feeling is that when people you know actually start going to hospital - or dying - suddenly no-one disputes social distancing and the transmission rate should plummet.  But there will be a 2 week lag before that effects statistics, due to the virus incubation period.  The number of deaths could go very high in that time.  Amongst other things, it would be a very bad time to get any other serious illness.