What You Can Do to Save People TODAY [COVID-19]

Mar 15, 2020 2:57:32 PM

I awoke this morning (3/15/20) and thought every rational and caring person that I know understood the importance of social distancing. I spent yesterday talking to dozens of people and getting dozens of small social events canceled. I thought my job was done. This morning I spoke to my close friend - a smart and compassionate person - and found that he was heading with his family to a bike shop and the Container Store... I realize my job had just begun.

I am an ER doctor of 20 years and am married to a double-boarded doctor with more experience. I realize we have a unique perspective, and therefore, have a duty and obligation to educate and influence as many people as possible.

You will never have another day in your life where you can literally make such a small sacrifice and potentially save the lives of dozens and perhaps hundreds or even thousands of people. This is not an exaggeration.

If you care about your fellow humans, I would appeal to you to spend the next hour processing the following information and then send the info to any person you know - especially anyone of influence or power. I anticipate (or at least, I hope) we will be on lockdown by Wednesday or Thursday as a country (hopefully earlier), and it will be three days too late for the hundreds of thousands of people that will then be dead in about a month. Mayor Adler's ban on social gatherings larger than 250 people in Austin, Texas yesterday is progressive and an okay start, but public gatherings need to be restricted further ASAP. This needs to happen everywhere. Thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - of lives will depend on these few days.

Here are some important resources:

Up to date number of cases - look at the exponential curve - this should give you chills - it will be 12 days from complete shutdown before we can influence the curve (updated frequently, click the link for current numbers).
Asaf Bitton, MD, MPH (the executive director of Ariadne Labs in Boston, MA)
A smart person describing what we all need to do to keep your family safe and do your part to avoid a worsening crisis. This article contains actionable advice for how to avoid spreading the virus further.
The science behind what is happening. **This is scary but we all need to read it**

There is WAY more here you need to see other than this graph, please click through to read the rest.
This graph from the U.S. this morning (3/15/20) - this is profound and the most meaningful image we will look at for a very long time.

It takes 12 days of total lockdown before you can change the nature of that curve.
We are in for a world of hurt as a society if we don't flatten that curve. Italy is 12 days ahead of us. They are on day 6-7 of lockdown. They have another 7-8 days of exponential growth. Take a look at their curve it is still going straight up exponentially. They have been out of ICU beds for days.