Here is what I wrote my dad in attempt to get him to close up the church of which he is an elder, in a similarly sized city. My dad is a statistician and 30% prepper, so this was more about giving him evidence to take to others than convincing him:
I made a model to translate deaths in an area into probable number of current infections, and another to make a crude guess at what prevalence hospitals will be over-capacity (the answer is 1.5%). Based on my math, 1 confirmed death in [county] implies a prevalence of 0.13% (range 0.027% to 0.43%), which is 4 doublings away from overwhelming hospitals. However the doubling time is also used to calculate the current prevalence, so if you think the doubling time is very short you not only have very little time from .1 to .2%, but you’re more likely to already be at .3%. So in the 5th percentile scenario you’re at .43% and have only 6 days until you’re over 1.5%.
I think people should quarantine themselves at least three weeks before their municipality reaches hospital saturation (so that if they get it, it’s before the peak). So under the current testing regiment, a single confirmed community transmission case in [county[ should absolutely trigger a shut down. If we get decent survey testing system going it would of course be different.
The other thing to watch out for is excess pneumonia deaths. I don’t know how to check this, but if there’s a noticeable bump in pneumonia I would attribute them all to COVID-19.
I didn’t think of this at the time, but in retrospect it would have been helpful to suggest replacements for an in-person service. I’ll bet it is easier to convince your parents’ friends to switch to online bridge with voice chat than to give it up entirely.
Here is what I wrote my dad in attempt to get him to close up the church of which he is an elder, in a similarly sized city. My dad is a statistician and 30% prepper, so this was more about giving him evidence to take to others than convincing him:
I didn’t think of this at the time, but in retrospect it would have been helpful to suggest replacements for an in-person service. I’ll bet it is easier to convince your parents’ friends to switch to online bridge with voice chat than to give it up entirely.