Australia has touched 564 coronavirus cases as of yesterday night (17th of March). Every hour the virus is spreading to more and more people. We have touched the acceleration phase. What it means is that we are going to see exponential rise of coronavirus cases.
The government is initiating more and more social distancing measures every day. The Victorian government and the Australian government are doing the best preparations humanly possible. There are questions like is it time to shutdown the schools? Is it time for a lock down? Government is monitoring the situation every hour and taking advice from experts to make their decisions.
Lots of people have started to panic. How is it going to be tomorrow? Next week? One month from today?
Australia has crossed the 500 mark. Let's consider the data from other countries who were in the same stage a few weeks back.
On 5th and 6th of March respectively, Germany and France crossed the line of 500 Coronavirus cases.
US crossed the 500 mark of Coronavirus cases on 8th of March.
UK crossed the 500 mark of Coronavirus cases on 12th of March.
South Korea crossed the 500 mark of Coronavirus cases on 23rd of February.
The commonality between all the above graphs are that the new number of cases for each day are just going to go up. The trajectory has only one direction, that is to move upwards. But what's promising is how the South Korean graph looks different from that of the rest of the countries. South Korea managed to flatten the curve as soon as it hit the 8000 mark. The number of new cases each day has gone down to double digits.
What the South Korean graph shows us is the importance of social distancing. The federal and state governments have their own restrictions to set policies that affects the whole population. There are even questions like is forcefully locking down people un-democratic? This is a totally new situation no governments had to face in the recent history. The government is operating in the fullest capacity now. It's time for us do our part. Social distancing is the only way to stop the spread of the virus. Try to stay at home. Go out only for buying essentials.
If you have the option to keep your kids at home, please do it. Do not wait for the government to shutdown the schools. Government is hesitating to close the schools and child care centres because it prevents the medical workers to go to their work. Especially if your child is Asthma prone or have any other medical conditions then try to keep them at home.
Everyone doesn't have the liberty to stay at home. But if there is any possibility that you can do to socially distance yourself from others, now is the time to do it. Not tomorrow, but today.
There will be around 1000 to 2000 people who might have infected in Australia now. Unfortunately their symptoms will outwardly show only in a few days or after a week. Meanwhile they might be spreading it to others unknowingly. The number of coronavirus cases we are seeing today are from people who got infected one or two weeks back.
If we take the case of Germany, after crossing 500 cases, within a week it jumped to 2700 cases. France and United States jumped to more than 3000 cases within a week. These are useful data that tells us where we will be after 7 days. Same day next week the chances are very high that we also cross 2500 mark.
When do we need more strict social distancing measures? Is it after we have a 1000 cases or after 5000 cases? Or do we need it today? The government is consulting with the experts from all different domains to make a call on it. But I would urge the government to take more stricter measures like closing the schools, reduce gatherings to less than 10. The decision to close down the border is admirable. It is not easy to take such a decision considering the economic impact it is going to have on our daily lives. It will impact thousands of jobs. It is a tough call, but necessary.
Closing the schools is going to affect medical workers, and other essential workers that keep our economy functioning. They may have to stay at home to look after their kids. By the current count more than one third of the medical workers will have to stay at home if the schools shutdown.
As a parent what I know is that the majority diseases me and my wife get are from my kids which they bring from their school and childcare respectively. Once I get it I might accidentally spread it to my colleagues in office or my friends. If we don't have stricter social distancing measures today which includes shutting down of the schools, wouldn't the impact be higher when our health and other economic institutes starts to collapse?
Disclaimer: I am not a medical or economic expert. But a common man, a parent, a husband, a son, a brother, a friend, a shopper, a worker and a citizen. The data for this blog is from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
