<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div>I belong to several local organizations who hold public meetings (and have cancelled them due to the pandemic).<br></div><div><br></div><div>Here is a writeup that I submitted to the leadership of one of those organizations.<br></div><div><br></div><div>The province of Ontario is now under a pandemic lockdown. It's being orchestrated by a diverse group of mostly-local organizations.<br></div><div><br></div><div>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.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div><br></div></div><div>As you know, all Ontario public schools are closed until at April 5, and March break trips are cancelled.<br></div><div>The University of Waterloo just cancelled all public and non-essential events until further notice, as of this morning.<br></div><div><a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/coronavirus/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://uwaterloo.ca/coronavirus/</a><br></div><div>Communitech, a local KW tech organization, has cancelled all public events until at least June 5:<br></div><div><a href="https://www.communitech.ca/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.communitech.ca/</a><br></div><div>The Elmira Maple Syrup Festival is cancelled.<br></div><div>And much more...<br></div><div><div><br></div></div></div></div><div>The Globe and Mail has published an article explaining social distancing, and why we all need to do this now:<br></div></div><div><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-coronavirus-pandemic-canada-needs-get-serious-about-social-distancing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-coronavirus-pandemic-canada-needs-get-serious-about-social-distancing/</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>For people who want to read a detailed technical explanation:<br></div><div dir="ltr"><div><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="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" class="defanged2-defanged4-gmail-Xx" dir="ltr" style="font-size:13px;color:rgb(38, 50, 56);font-family:Roboto, sans-serif;">https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca</a><br></div><div>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:<br></div><div> Feb 23: 4<br></div><div> Feb 28: 7<br></div><div> Mar 1: 15<br></div><div> Mar 6: 28<br></div><div> Mar 12: 59<br></div><div>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:<br></div><div> Mar 17: 120<br></div><div> Mar 22: 240<br></div><div> Mar 27: 500<br></div><div> April 1: 1,000<br></div><div> April 6: 2,000<br></div><div> April 11: 4,000<br></div><div> April 16: 8,000<br></div><div> April 21: 16,000<br></div><div> April 26: 32,000<br></div><div>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.<br></div></div><div><div><br></div><div>P.S., for KWLUGers who want to raise their anxiety levels further, I recommend the continually updated graphs and statistics at: <br></div><a href="https://covid19info.live/">https://covid19info.live/</a><br></div></body></html>