Virginia’s count so far today is 30, up from 17 yesterday.
Two days in a row where the number has almost doubled from the previous day.
If you look at S. Korea and China, there is a 19-21 day period of peak cases and then they come down the back side of the curve. We are on Day 11. People need to chill out and just let it run it’s course.
Starting with patient -0-, without significant controls (aka "social distancing"), total infected can reach approx 16k in 14 days. However, given just another 2 weeks in a same lax environment, the gross total can hit almost 270 million. (And of course, the next day - day 29 - it doubles again to 540 million and so on ...)
You can play with the numbers yourself. I'm convinced someone demonstrated this model (or similar) to Trump: https://www.calculator.net/exponent-calculator.html?base=2&exponent=14&fresult=&x=48&y=21
Now, as a caveat, while this math equation also holds true for the flu, common cold, etc, the big difference is heritable resistance and susceptibility. That is, even though 200m Americans may have a cold/flu, it doesn't collapse the medical care infrastructure. We just drink a bunch of OJ, pop some benadryl and muddle through.
However, the pathology characteristics of covid-19 are quite different. With the same number infected, but with some % requiring add'l medical care, the entire system can be collapsed. Which is why Trump made his address Wed, and in about 15 minutes is supposed to declare a national emergency.