I would modify your advice to “2 weeks before all the hospital beds are full (in your local region)”, because 2 weeks is roughly the lag time between exposure and needing hospitalization (I think?). With exponential growth @ 5day doubling time, you really want to not catch it when 0.01%ish of the local population is hospitalized [assuming per-capita hospital beds in your region is typical of the USA]. My region has ~7M people, so I would be thinking about upping my social-isolation game when 700 people in my region are in the hospital, or something vaguely like that. Probably adjust that down quite a bit for uncertainty in the input parameters, and for not all cases being diagnosed (even in the hospital). Adjust down even more if lots of hospital staff are likely to get sick or quarantined because they’re not taking appropriate precautions, which seems probable at the moment.
I would modify your advice to “2 weeks before all the hospital beds are full (in your local region)”, because 2 weeks is roughly the lag time between exposure and needing hospitalization (I think?). With exponential growth @ 5day doubling time, you really want to not catch it when 0.01%ish of the local population is hospitalized [assuming per-capita hospital beds in your region is typical of the USA]. My region has ~7M people, so I would be thinking about upping my social-isolation game when 700 people in my region are in the hospital, or something vaguely like that. Probably adjust that down quite a bit for uncertainty in the input parameters, and for not all cases being diagnosed (even in the hospital). Adjust down even more if lots of hospital staff are likely to get sick or quarantined because they’re not taking appropriate precautions, which seems probable at the moment.