Ahead of the Curve (Flattening it)

For the last 6 days Colorado steadily reported 23-38 new Covid-19 coronavirus cases per day. Today there were 61 new cases, a big jump.

This is my preferred webpage for tracking cases in Colorado: https://covid19.colorado.gov/state-recovery-assistance 

So far only about 10% of people tested for the virus in Colorado are showing up positive. This is a win, people are being cautious, getting tested, and we're getting lots of negative tests. The median time to onset of new symptoms is five days, with 97.5% of all cases showing symptoms in 11.5 days. The test takes three days to show positive or negative.

Colorado went into mild lockdown on Monday, so really, it will be Tuesday, March, 24th before we know if we've gotten a hold of this thing in Colorado, meaning slowed the exponential growth of infected people.

I'm optimistic. Colorado's first case was an out of state skier who had recently traveled to Italy. So we were close behind the big hubs like Seattle and San Francisco and New York to start the social distancing, but fortunately we have a more spaced out population, so it appears to have not infected thousands, like it has in New York. Because we are a tourist hub, it makes sense that we would be quickly infected.

As a quick anecdote, I went to Fedex today to pick up a package, and aside from the door handle, I only touched the box I was picking up. I didn't sign myself, or share the driver's license, and I stayed well away from most people. The woman who helped me was cautious as well as we talked about the pandemic.

Maybe it's just my little corner of Colorado, but people seem to be appropriately cautious. I stepped off the sidewalk to pass someone today and she said, "thank you". I think we're ahead of the curve. Yes our growth is exponential still, but barely. We need to lock down even tighter the next two weeks to really confirm that we're there, but I do think that is happening.