Just ran across this lovely photo on reddit, showing what you should stock up for the coming coronavirus plague. In other words, “Forget the ? Stock up on ?”
Exponential Growth
And no, contrary to the lies coming from the weirdly plump lips of Cheetojesus, the end is not near. Coronavirus infections rise at an exponential rate. What does that mean?
Think about it this way: If you have a chessboard with 64 squares, then put one gram of weed on the first square, two grams on the second square, four grams on the third square, eight grams on the fourth square, and so on–doubling the number of grams every square.
At the end of this little exercise, you will have 2 multiplied by itself 64 times: 2x2x2x2….
How many grams will you have? Well, on the last square alone, you will have 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 grams (more than 18 sextillion grams.) . That’s more than you can fit into the back of your F-150 or the boot of your 1974 VW Bus.
That is the meaning of exponential growth.
Now it’s not clear that coronavirus grows at the same rate as your chessboard of weed. The weed example uses an exponent of 2. in other words, grams of weed squared (weed^2). Coronavirus, on the other hand, may grow at a different rate.
If you put CheetoJesus on one square of the chessboard and give him coronavirus, how likely is it that Jarvanka (Jared and Ivanka) on the second square will be infected? How likely is it PenceThePomposity, MoscowMitch, MelaniaTheMigrant and DonnieJr on the third square will get infected? The exponential growth rate is probably less than 2. But it is exponential growth nonetheless.
Here is the actual US graph of cases as of March 13.
Want to know what that looks like in moving pictures? Here is a terrific article from the Washington Post with live graphs that show you what can happen in various scenarios.
Rules to Live By
The take home message from the article and from almost any expert you see, hear or read is this:
- Rule 1–Wash Your Hands
- Rule 2–Don’t Touch Your Face
- Rule 3–Stay Away from Other People (e.g.,Don’t Shake Hands)
- Rule 4–See Rule 1
Of course, the VeryStableGenius #trumpolini believes the rules do not apply to him. On Friday, he shook hands with nearly all the lickspittlers around him. He even tried to shake hands with the one guy who was not kissing his ass. The guy gave him a lesson in how to behave in an epidemic.
Stay Home and Grow
Anyway, like I said last time: Stay home. Smoke it if you grow it. Otherwise, stock up in case of lock-down, which is what is apparently driving cannabis sales in a lot of cities right now.
And there are other weed effects that are likely as well:
- cannabis growers not able to get supplies to or from their operation because distribution workers are quarantined,
- cannabis retailers shut down for the same reason
- online suppliers running out of product
- investors freaking out and refusing to invest in anything
- big cannabis companies running out of cash.
At the end of the day, if we don’t follow some basic rules, remember Monty Python: “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”
