4/2/2020: The Month Ahead for Orange County, California

As I write this (well I almost don't want to write this), I'm simply just trying to take in all that's happening.  I, with the rest of the world, am reeling from this rapid chain of events that has taken the world by storm.  Of course, I am referring to Covid-19.

This post is primarily geared towards Orange County, California, where I live. I'm no scientist. I'm no statistician. I'm no health expert or doctor or medical professional. I am a layperson. However, I've made some observations about the unfoldment of this virus in Orange County. I feel like I owe it to this community to post my observations and then for you to do with them what you will.

My disclaimer here is that I simply consume the news like you.  Most of the basis for my charts are including what I see in the news.  And some numbers or stats stand out to me more than others so I will subjectively use those.  As with any prediction or model, it is a prediction.  This inherently means it is a guess.  Even when scientists predict something, they're just guessing.  So this chart is my "best guess" of what's ahead in the month of April.  I do plan on updating this page as major developments occur.  As I do, I will notate what I changed near the bottom of the page.

A lot of this is showing up in the news too.  But, in any case, these are just estimates.  When I first started observing the virus, I attempted to make my own chart that tracked the first known cases in the county where I live, Orange County, CA.  It started from a handful of cases back in the beginning of March to today where there are over 600 known cases.  As testing ramps up, the number of reported cases may increase (and probably already has).

Looking at the growth rate of the virus, or the R0 (R "naught")--this refers to how easily the virus spreads from person to person.  Since it seems, on average, that people can spread this virus right away and even before they are symptomatic for a duration of 5 days, I put my "doubling rate" at 5 days.  I've heard this statistic many times too.  Many have said that this virus doubles every 5 days.  That, of course, is a simplification.  When I've tracked this virus in Orange County, it has more than doubled every 5 days.  In fact the multiplication factor I've used every 5 days is 2.6.  This then means that, for every infected person, they pass this on to 2.6 more people.

The blue line in the above chart shows what it looks like when a virus keeps on that trend line.

The red shaded portion is my projection for "basic social distancing" in Orange County.  You'll see that I show that the virus will level off April 28th or so.  But that puts the number of infected at 90,000.  This, in fact, is my worst case prediction.  How did I arrive at this?  I don't remember the exact article but I read somewhere that percent infected in Wuhan was 3% I believe at the surge in the pandemic.  It seemed like a safe, low number to put, especially since some lax social distancing would help flatten the curve by design.  The virus can and will not show a complete upwards trajectory, of course.  It has to come down as we've seen throughout the world in every country.

The green portion is my best case prediction based on "extreme social distancing."  This shows a peek number of infected to be 4,000.  If things go this way, we will hit a peek around April 11th.  I chose this peek number based off of Italy's numbers.  I somewhat subjectively picked Rome and followed their infection rates as they mirrored Orange County's.  There's tons of reasons why that isn't a great idea to do, but it is one approach and it was convenient.

The actual results will fall somewhere between these two estimations.  The date to pay attention to (and why I wrote this blog post) is 4/21/2020.  That is the date that Orange County could run out of hospital beds.  The County has already secured alternate hospitals so this won't be a huge issue other than a logistical one.  My point in all of this is to show that the last week of April through mid-May could be a very rough ordeal for this County to get through.  It's best to prepare ourselves even for the worst case and hope it does not happen.

I reached the "out of hospital bed" date by assuming 43% of those infected will need a hospital bed (and I am not even looking at ICU beds).  I came up with that number through looking at other statistical models and looking at some real data.  Sorry no references as this is really just a hobby of mine and I don't have the time to gather those!

I could be completely wrong and April and May could be a breeze.  If they are, then I think we've headed off the worst of this pandemic in California.  There is so much subjectivity in all of this.  Some variables or things that affect all of this modeling is:

• How quickly we are able to roll out tests, how much testing we do and who and why we test
• How much the average citizen follows the social distancing and stay-at-home orders
• How much of the hidden population we don't know that is already infected that then keeps spreading the virus
• How quickly our current protocols pay off for us (increasing social distancing and stay-at-home orders beginning mid-March)
• There are many more...

Again, my point in all of this is to spread what I personally have been learning and to help prepare all of us for a potentially rough end of April that gets better mid-May.  I hope and pray that the current trend does not continue and that there is a seamless transition (if it does occur) between running out of hospital beds and transitioning to alternate or converted hospitals.  My recommendation is to stay inside, shop only when necessary, make your own masks and hand sanitizer and limit your contact to only those whom you absolutely need to contact.  Stay home and stay safe!

Update 4/12/20: We did hit the peak number of infections per day of this virus around 4/1/20. As such, we are well ahead of the best case estimate with current number of infections around 1,300 (my estimate was almost 5x this number). We are now in a tapering off phase and should see a dramatic reduction of daily infections over the next several weeks.

Update 7/7/20: Looking back now, this shows the extreme level of panic that we were all in back then.  The current number of cases in OC (17,882) now match this chart's predictions with "no social distancing" (blue line).  We were just all panicked 3 months ago.  The red shaded area in the chart is about 10x higher than it should be when I wrote this post.  Clearly this is an epidemic that we can control and we have proven that we can contain the infection rate through social distancing.  The real question remains: how long can/should we have to fundamentally change our lives for this virus?