Today's totals for U.S. New Cases is 19,452. That's a factor of 1.04. Yesterday the factor was 1.09. That's good news. We are still headed off a cliff, but not as soon. Every week we delay the peak will save many lives. Hospitals will less overloaded. More masks and equipment will be available.
Let us hope this trend continues.
Other countries have also stopped the daily increase. Spain may have. It is actually down for the second day in a row. (Whereas the U.S. is up a little, but not as much as it was before.)
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/
Until recently, the trend was relentless at 1.3. Here is the difference a steady 1.1 increase and 1.3:
By April 12 --
1.1 increase gives 803,435 cases, 81,256 daily increase
1.3 increase gives 4,353,862 cases, 995,668 daily increase
As I expect everyone can see, either number would be catastrophic, but 900,000 new patients is more than 10 times worse. It would mean only a tiny fraction of patients gets any treatment at all. 20% of patients need to be hospitalized. That's 200,000 people per day. Most would never get near a hospital. They would survive, or die, at home, with no better medical care than people afflicted by the black plague in 1347. The worst case estimate of the mortality rate is 3.5%, but that is assuming people get some level of hospital care. When there is no care, I do not know what the numbers would be, but some accounts from Italy indicate it would be 6% to 10%. In other words, 20,000 deaths per day, for many weeks, until natural immunity turns the curve down.
Comparing my simplistic spreadsheet to professional models, I find that around April 12 my spreadsheet departs far from reality, and becomes useless. Things would not be as bad as this. Still, according real models, we might be looking at hundreds of thousands of new cases per day.
My spreadsheet is wrong for April 12, but the gigantic difference it shows from different exponents is real. That is why professionals estimate the total death toll at anywhere from ~300,000 to several million. It all depends on the rate, and the rate can only be reduced by staying at home and social distancing. There were much better alternatives, but the government never even tried them, and it is too late now. We cannot escape many thousands of deaths per day for weeks, perhaps months. A 9/11 attack every day, only this time, everyone saw it coming. Let us hope it is not hundreds of thousands of deaths a day. It might be. The experts all say they cannot predict what will happen. They say only that if we do not shelter in place, it will be far worse.