If you have any Trumper friends who can’t quite see the point of social distancing, mask wearing, or other rational responses to the current plague, you might try referring them to this article, which spells it out so clearly even a six year old could understand it. I realize that would mean a certain very stable genius would still have a hard time understanding, but it might be a start.
I especially enjoyed this explanation of exponential growth:
A popular way to understand how a virus can appear to “suddenly” explode into a local epidemic is the example of a pond and a lily pad.
On day one, the pond is clear of vegetation and somebody puts a single lily pad plant into it—one that doubles every day. By the 30th day, the pond is entirely covered with lily pads and you can’t see the water.
The question that’s key to understanding what this has to do with COVID-19 is: “On what day was the pond half-covered by lily pads?”
People who don’t know science would say that it’s probably halfway through the 30 days—day 15, or sometime around then, maybe day 20.
But the correct answer is day 29, the day before “half-covered” doubles and becomes “fully covered.”
Similarly, the day when the pond was one-quarter covered was day 28—two days before it was entirely covered. It was one-eighth covered (far less worrisome) on day 27, three days before it was entirely covered.
Although it may take more than just one day for COVID-19 incidents to double, this explains why one day it seems like there are just a few cases and within a week or two hospitals are “suddenly” overwhelmed, and unthinkable numbers of people are gasping for air and dying.
Not to carp, but that must be a pretty big pond. At day thirty there would be 2^29 lily pads in that pond, which, if I’m not mistaken, would amount to a bit more than half a billion lily pads. I think we’d have to promote it to a lake.
Quibbles aside, it’s a good article.