Revelations About Coronavirus Medical Stockpiles
Rachel Maddow had some troubling revelations tonight. Trump made no orders to confine stockpiled masks of US manufacturers to the US, and they sold hundreds of millions abroad. The other revelation, is that most of the ventilators in the US stockpile don’t work, because the Administration canceled the maintainable contract last year. Also, the government stockpile of PPE is almost empty. It was denied to Democratic states, and lavished on Republican states. The few hundred ventilators that they gave to Los Angeles didn’t work, but Los Angeles got them fixed in Silicon Valley. Let’s hope that that works for the rest.
The good news is that as of tonight, only 11 states are holding out from stay-at-home effort to rid us of the Coronavirus. 87% of Americans are now subject to the restraints. However, a major part of the workforce is still doing essential work, and subject to the virus, as well as transmitting it.
We have a technical paragraph of with exponential growth, say of cases, that the rate of growth is also exponential, which surprises some people. We put that at the end of this article.
The number of US Coronavirus cases passed two hundred thousand today, and the number of deaths passed five thousand at 5,138. Almost half of these were in New York at 2,220, and a quarter were in New York City, at 1,374.
Here is todays table of cases by Domain, number of Cases, and Percent Increase over yesterday.
| Domain | Cases | Percent Increase |
| US | 216,721 | 14.3% |
| NY | 84,046 | 10.5% |
| NJ | 22,255 | 19.0% |
| CA | 9,907 | 17.1% |
| MI | 9,315 | 22.3% |
| FL | 7,773 | 15.3% |
| MA | 7,738 | 16.9% |
| IL | 6,980 | 16.4% |
| LA | 6,424 | 22.7% |
| PA | 6.063 | 22.2% |
| WA | 5,984 | 9.8% |
| GA | 4,748 | 15.3% |
| TX | 4,607 | 18.1% |
| CT | 3,557 | 13.7% |
| CO | 3,342 | 12.7% |
| TN | 2,933 | 22.7% |
| IN | 2,568 | 19.0% |
| OH | 2,547 | 15.8% |
| MD | 1,986 | |
| Canada | 9.731 | 13.3% |
| Mexico | 1,378 | 13.4% |
| Brazil | 6,931 | 21.2% |
| Los Angeles County | 3,518 | 16.8% |
| Orange County | 606 | 20.7% |
The US has done well, and New York very well. It we take 20% as a sure threshold for a bad growth rate, we see Michigan, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Brazil, and Orange County are high.
The nature of the exponential. All derivatives or accelerations or rates of acceleration of an exponential are the same exponential growth.
Take the number of cases, N = N0 x exp (ct), where c is the growth rate, and t is the time. Then the time rate of change of N,
dN/dt = c N0 x exp (ct).
This is same exponential with the same exponential growth. Now consider the acceleration of the number N:
D (dN/dt)/ dt = d^2N/dt^2 = c^2 N0 exp (ct).
It also has the same exponential growth. And so on, and so on.
If N was a distance, then its rate of change would be the velocity, and the velocity’s rate of change would be the acceleration, and so on. For an exponential, they all grow exponentially.
The great Bard of our time, Mick Mulvaney, who unfortunately was exiled to Northern Ireland, said it best: Get Over It!
