[kwlug-disc] pandemic lockdown

[Doug Moen]

I belong to several local organizations who hold public meetings (and have cancelled them due to the pandemic).

Here is a writeup that I submitted to the leadership of one of those organizations.

The province of Ontario is now under a pandemic lockdown. It's being orchestrated by a diverse group of mostly-local organizations.

The new rules are: (1) social distancing; (2) cancel, or do not attend, non-essential public gatherings; (3) cancel all non-essential travel (this means march break vacations!). I believe it is the responsibility of all community organizations to broadcast this message to their members.

As you know, all Ontario public schools are closed until at April 5, and March break trips are cancelled.
The University of Waterloo just cancelled all public and non-essential events until further notice, as of this morning.
https://uwaterloo.ca/coronavirus/
Communitech, a local KW tech organization, has cancelled all public events until at least June 5:
https://www.communitech.ca/
The Elmira Maple Syrup Festival is cancelled.
And much more...

The Globe and Mail has published an article explaining social distancing, and why we all need to do this now:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-coronavirus-pandemic-canada-needs-get-serious-about-social-distancing/

For people who want to read a detailed technical explanation:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca <https://www.google.com/url?q=https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca&sa=D&source=hangouts&ust=1584147693240000&usg=AFQjCNFhyUn3ihXLWnp3iKMvOZWJbbCy2Q>
As an addendum to this, for people with math knowledge, the # of confirmed infections in Ontario has been rising at an exponential rate since Feb 23. Here are the numbers that I gathered from news reports:
 Feb 23: 4
 Feb 28: 7
 Mar 1: 15
 Mar 6: 28
 Mar 12: 59
An increase from 4 to 59 doesn't sound bad, because those are both small numbers. It would matter less if this was a linear increase. But it's not, it is an exponential increase. Each of these numbers is approximately double the previous number. The infections are doubling every 5 to 6 days right now. It would be very bad if this trend continued, because then the future numbers would look like this:
 Mar 17: 120
 Mar 22: 240
 Mar 27: 500
 April 1: 1,000
 April 6: 2,000
 April 11: 4,000
 April 16: 8,000
 April 21: 16,000
 April 26: 32,000
If this trend continues, the hospital system will be overwhelmed and a lot of people will die. It's already happening in other countries. That's why we need to lock down now, and I believe it is the responsibility of community organizations to broadcast this message to their members.

P.S., for KWLUGers who want to raise their anxiety levels further, I recommend the continually updated graphs and statistics at: 
https://covid19info.live/
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