Flattening the curve

If you compare Shelby to Davidson counties...

you get a really good sense of how the virus works.

The graphs show those that have tested positive. But that said, I need to point out that the real number of people infected is much much higher than reported based on several studies. But lacking any other data I'll have to assume that the factor (which a recent JAMA article pegged at 6-24x) is comparable between these two counties. The red line indicates the percentage of the population that has ever tested positive for this. I'm intentionally not applying any factor because I don't want to be called out on that.

If you look at the peak number of infected people in Davidson, it's actually higher than Shelby. Davidson peaked at around 6000 while Shelby peaked at around 5400. In both cases, the inflection point for flattening the curve is around 2.2% on the red axis.

Now keep in mind that Shelby has more than 250,000 more people than Davidson and they had a lower peak infected than here.

Shelby shows how you flatten the curve.

Percentage-wise the same number of people are getting sick, but the peak of ill people is substantially less as a percentage of the population than here in Davidson.

But once you get a critical mass of people infected and it takes off... it'll keep going up until it doesn't.