It seems to be literally impossible for US politicians to understand that "It doubles every (25 or so) days means that if you have 100 new cases today, then in under a month, you’re going to have 200, and in another month, it will be 400, then 800 and so forth. Literally IMPOSSIBLE. It’s like a natural law or something. So if you say “Oh look, it’s only growing pretty slowly right now, so we can open things up” then you’re just saying “It’s okay if we double the number of cases by this time next month”.
What DOES work to make the doubling rate slower? We already know: Masks any time you’re around people who you don’t already share living space with. Every time. And staying away from groups of people, particularly indoors. Oh, and staying isolated whenever feasible. What else works (but the USA won’t make it at all easy): Good fast testing with good fast contact tracing (and very strict isolation for spreaders), such as what the University Football programs are doing.
It seems to be literally impossible for US politicians to understand that "It doubles every (25 or so) days means that if you have 100 new cases today, then in under a month, you’re going to have 200, and in another month, it will be 400, then 800 and so forth. Literally IMPOSSIBLE. It’s like a natural law or something. So if you say “Oh look, it’s only growing pretty slowly right now, so we can open things up” then you’re just saying “It’s okay if we double the number of cases by this time next month”.
What DOES work to make the doubling rate slower? We already know: Masks any time you’re around people who you don’t already share living space with. Every time. And staying away from groups of people, particularly indoors. Oh, and staying isolated whenever feasible. What else works (but the USA won’t make it at all easy): Good fast testing with good fast contact tracing (and very strict isolation for spreaders), such as what the University Football programs are doing.