“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” — Mark Twain

Here’s the data table and curves (updated evening 23-March):

Trends appear to be on track to reach over 300,000 cases by March 31.

Okay. Now what?  “How is this information this supposed to help me? Is this good news or bad news? Should I retreat to the storm cellar or head back to work, virus be damned? I can’t really think about this right now because little Oscar has just drawn his own curves on the kitchen wall. We’re out of chicken nuggets and I just got a call that the boss is shutting things down tomorrow – instantly transmuting my laptop into a doorstop. Now I’m coughing. I wonder if I should take my temperature. Maybe I’ll wait a little while… I mean, what if…?”

Great… So how is PanDispatch supposed to help?

Take a breath. Since you are reading this we can assume that you and your family are reasonably healthy and in a safe space, granting a little time to see how things are going with the pandemic and maybe get some idea of when this damn thing might begin to end.

The intent of PanDispatch is to provide a tangible, reliable idea of what has happened so far – and an educated (mathematical) guess as to what might happen next. In order to be as objective and unbiased as possible we focus on current data and historical perspective. How does this help? By empowering you to take a momentary step back and assess your situation, governed by your life experience, to help adjust your expectations and planning.

PanDispatch can’t do this for you. Broad-brush context-free “don’t panic” or “the sky is falling!” admonitions aren’t very helpful. The idea is to offer a quick, reliable data source to help you figure out where your thinking stands on the Auntie Em — Chicken Little spectrum.

One principle we should keep in mind while considering how to feel about all of this is that, like many (most) things in life, we have absolutely no control over it. The pandemic will follow its own path. Society at large will respond in its own collective way, while you sit in lockdown reading this post. Sort of discouraging, I know. But this is actually one of the great things about statistics. They give you a window into both of these things. And you can adjust your actions and expectations based on what you see through that window.

Still not really helping, right? Yeah. Let’s take a closer look through the window. Right now things look more than a little dire.  But — what might not be so obvious is that current trends are indicating polynomial growth in cases – math-speak for growth that is slower than the doubling-every-3-days growth in early March. This suggests that things might be getting just a little bit better. We should keep in mind however that the effects of mitigation and testing continue to affect the number of confirmed cases and rate of growth. That is, the situation continues to be very much in flux.

Current governmental and health care measures could very well lead to more stability in the statistics over the next few weeks, providing a more solid basis for predictions and answers to “how long will this thing last…?” Or, they could lead to significant disruption of predictive efforts by undermining what progress might have been made to date. Sorry — it could go either way. Actions/reactions in the next week or two will be critical to near-term and long-term outcomes.

So therefore… at the moment we are rapidly swirling around this whirlpool (to mix metaphors). Any guesses as to health, employment, and financial outcomes when the pandemic begins to fade are almost by definition pretty low confidence. Much like we so often inform little Oscar: “You’ll just have to wait.” Fortunately our view through the window should become clearer within the next few weeks – assuming no radical governmental or societal actions seriously upset the apple cart, resulting in highly nonlinear (impossible to predict) effects on predictions and consequently, on our planning. In other words, for now keep an eye on the situation and do your best to follow social-distancing recommendations!

Now, speaking of Oscar, I hear the water running in the bathroom…