Coronavirus and Math

No one likes to "shelter in place", but it's gotta be preferable to a worldwide pandemic. And understanding the mathematics of the growth of coronavirus makes a shelter in place order seem a little more reasonable:

With the novel coronavirus spreading exponentially in the United States, “flattening the curve” could seem challenging. According to mathematicians, simple preventative measures may be more effective than you think.

“Over the past six weeks, the number of recorded cases of COVID-19 outside mainland China has increased approximately 15% per day, which means doubling every five days,” mathematician Grant Sanderson told ABC News.

Sanderson runs a program called 3Blue1Brown, which teaches complex math lessons using visual aids. His YouTube videos sometimes use real-world scenarios as examples, and his video explaining the exponential spread of COVID-19 just surpassed 3 million views.

Sanderson said the virus’ rate of spread has been consistent across several different countries, regardless of when the country’s outbreak began. At its current rate of exponential growth, the virus could spread to over a million people in the U.S. by the start of May, according to Sanderson.

That current rate, however, doesn’t account for human intervention, according to Sanderson and other experts in the field.

Update: I just finished watching the video on the spread of coronavirus and pronounce it an exceptional math video.