With everybody being hysterical about this pandemic, more and more freedoms are being slashed as we speak. Time to take a look at the available data.
All you see in the media is this exponentially growing curve of cases that tested positive for Covid-19. This is the current data for the US according to https://covidtracking.com/us-daily/
Scary isn't it. These charts are all over the media around the world in every single country. But now, let's test the following hypothesis:
COVID-19 cases are NOT growing exponentially but number of tests are.
Unfortunately there is no data about how many tests are conducted daily for most country. Yet, the US is tracking this data. So let's take a look:
There is a clear exponential growth of tests per day, which would explain why reported cases are also growing exponentially. To get a statistically accurate picture of the situation we need to get the percentage of positive tests per day. So if we divide 'reported positive tests per day' by 'number of tests per day' we get the following graph:
We see NO exponential growth here. We would expect this however, if COVID-19 was spreading exponentially. For the moment it is not.
Obviously, data is limited (only 2 weeks) and it's therefore too early to tell, if it stays the way it is.
However, given the current data, there is absolutely no rational reason to panic.
You can find the full data here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hwgFn4p-tv1csZBWMT2i2VtoxK2C6RutGvjNusQYy3c/edit?usp=sharing