COVID-19 cases increasing exponentially

I hope everyone is making a valiant effort to shelter in place, or at least continuing with spatial distancing, even if your local government isn’t (yet) mandating this action. The number of document COVID-19 cases in USA is approaching 10,000, and is still increasing exponentially, with the number of new cases also almost doubling each day. This chart of USA cases (from worldometers.info) only shows confirmed cases, and is woefully inadequate, since 1) with fast-moving numbers like these, it’s guaranteed to be obsolete long before you see it and 2) It doesn’t represent all those infected people out there who aren’t showing symptoms yet, but are still out and about, transmitting it to other people. I couldn’t believe all the crowds of kids on Spring Break, that I saw on the news this morning. They all will be going home to their local schools, communities, and families. Oh, boy. Y’all be very careful out there!

Here's an interesting fun fact, if you didn’t know it, from the World Health Organization article that describes the naming: the name for this disease is COVID-19, which stands for “Corona Virus Disease 2019.” The name for the virus itself is SARS-CoV-2, which stands for “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2.” There is a preference to use the disease name COVID-19, because using the virus name SARS-CoV-2 can cause unnecessary anxiety for some populations, especially in Asia, which was worst affected by the SARS outbreak in 2003.