US overtakes Italy & China to lead world in COVID-19 cases at 82,179

This occurred a few minutes ago according to Worldometers Coronavirus tracking, on Thursday, March 26, 2020, one day later than I'd forecast 5 days ago. And my three week old exponential projection of US confirmed cases remains largely accurate. New confirmed cases in the US are occurring at twice the daily rate of the next highest country, Spain -- nearly 14,000 at this moment, vs. 6,800.

In other news, global confirmed cases crossed the half-million mark and should surpass 1 million within the week.

US weekly growth remains about 10x. The country will cross the 100,000 confirmed-case mark within the next two days, and 1 million in another week, probably around April 4.

Given that testing seems to lag actual cases by about a factor of 80, based on multiple inference paths, and exponential growth should slow as both nearly half the population is already infected (new hosts are harder to find, possibly with natural resistance), and, I hope, public health containment efforts should start bending the curve downwards, the March 6 projection should be highly pessimistic (erring in overstating cases) beyond early April. Testing lag may continue to catch up with it for some time though. Uncharted waters for a nonexpert Space Alien Cat.

Wash your hands. Stay the fuck home. Flatten the curve.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

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