When Will the COVID-19 Clouds Break? COVID-19 Insights Report – March 25, 2020
By: Wesley Legg, Jack Houtz, and Scott David
Like most of you, we at Founders are working to get our hands around how long the COVID-19 public health emergency might last. This is an unprecedented event in the era of globalization; thus no one can know how it might play out. That said we are paying great attention to one data point for insight into the shape of the growth curve. A flattened curve, we believe, will be the starting point for rebooting our economy.
The data point of focus is the reproduction rate, also known as R0. R0 is the expected number of cases directly generated from one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection. Simply, the R0 of a virus can measure the intensity of its spread. A reproductive rate greater than 1.0 conveys the virus is still spreading and quantifies the rate of growth, and an R0 less than 1.0 means the spread is declining and will eventually die out.
In the COVID-19 Insights Report, we discuss the US daily cases and reproduction rate, along with a review of quarantine efforts by China, South Korea, and Italy.