The thing that stopped the spread of coronavirus in Hubei after ~50k infections is the lockdown. The lockdowns began January 22-23rd, affecting about 59m people

The thing that stopped the spread of coronavirus in Hubei after ~50k infections is the lockdown. The lockdowns began January 22-23rd, affecting about 59m people. Nobody is leaving their homes except a few essential personnel, to include medical personnel and food delivery. That works in China but it probably won't fly in most liberal democracies. At the time, less than 2k people were confirmed infected. Exponential growth continued for two more weeks, until hitting its inflection point. That's with the lockdown. Coronavirus has begun exponential growth in the rest of the world. The rest of the world already has more cases than China did when exponential growth inflected. As of today, it's not showing any signs of inflection. On February 26th, Trump said we had 15 cases in the US, and would be close to zero within a few days. 11 days later, we have 607 cases, 22 deaths, and 8 recoveries. That's a growth rate of 40% per day, and holding steady. The scary number isn't 607. And it isn't even 22. Nor is it 22/607 or 22/(8+22). (which, tbh, is pretty scary) The scary number is 40%. Sure, it's "just" old people with a high probability of dying. But I have several elderly relatives. I'm not enthusiastic about losing any of them.