Rt: Effective Reproduction Number of Covid-19
It's wild that California has been locked down for a full month and the reproduction number is still hovering around 1 and even went up a couple of days ago.If that's actually true, we shouldn't expect to see a quick decrease in cases and we probably aren't on track to end the lockdown any time before at least June. I can't help but wondering if the unlimited outside time under the guise of "exercise", but which people are clearly taking advantage of by going to hang out with friends in the park, has anything to do with it. Or perhaps it's the lack of masks in indoor areas like grocery stores that has prevented a bigger drop (in SF, only starting today has that finally changed).For all that California has been praised for acting quickly, it still feels like we've really been slow playing this lockdown by being so lenient, and without really having gained anything. And it doesn't really seem like there's any urgency anymore around continuing to increase testing, even though we know that's needed to open back up. Now we're going to be stuck inside for weeks or months longer than we would have needed to be if we had just copied what successful countries (Taiwan, South Korea) did from the beginning.