Update 12/3/2020: found this link, that shows in details numbers and clear previsions: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

I decided to take a break from my work for writing this post, even if I am in a moment of craziness, setting up a game changing ecosystem that will hit soon the NetSuite world.

In the last few days in the Netherlands the trend of confirmed cases is increasing faster than before.
Yesterday I was sharing with a colleague my thoughts about the situation, and about what could be wise starting doing in order to maximize its containment.
Sadly, as a feedback I simply got a sarcastic "yeah, we're all gonna die".

Initially my fantasy was looking for revenge, trying to find an even more sarcastic reply, like "it's called natural selection: the gene that makes us laugh at a pandemic will probably make some more steps towards extinction in the coming months".
But later I realized that she actually inspired me to write this post - which hopefully contributes to the containment of the outbreak - in a tough moment when I feel being part of the humanity more than a single person, and I cannot simply look away.

It's not the first time in these days that I have this feeling: not much people is even aware that in the Netherlands the outbreak is actually happening.

Please don't panic, don't buy all the mondkapje (masks) and all the canned food you can carry on your truck, don't lock yourself at home 24 hours per day.
But please, if you love yourselves, STAY INFORMED.

It's very easy, we just need to keep an eye on the situation and introduce in our common actions few simple rules to reduce the risk of spread.
Let's do it before the ... virus hits the fan!

I suggest to take a look at this article, that gives a set of simple and clear information (e.g. how / when to use masks, how to support kids emotionally, facing everyday's life with smartness, etc.) in order to help the community: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

Another information which can be useful to keep an eye on for understanding when it's actually knocking at our door is the number of cases per country / subregion, available on several portals. For example this Wikipedia page about the Netherlands is updated daily with a detailed report (similar pages are for all countries): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_the_Netherlands

I don't know how much people I will reach with this article, I hope as much as possible, but not for business purposes this time.
I want to feel free again to move around and meet people normally as soon as possible, and how things will evolve next few weeks only depends on how people react now.

I'm not a mathematician, I just look at the numbers since when it started in the Netherlands (27/2): in the first 7 days the count of cases went quite slowly up to 38, while in the next 5 days it increased by 283.
Similar trends can be observed in the first 2 weeks in several other countries where now the situation is much more critical.

We don't need much logic to realize that this is an exponential trend.
Plus, due to the invisible nature of this enemy and its incubation period, we have a wave effect. The numbers we observe now are people infected 2-3 weeks ago, and to know how many are now infected around us we need to wait 2-3 more weeks.
In other words, if we react after one week we have a one-week wave effect, if we react after one month we have a one-month wave effect.

Not caring, and even more mocking at people to make them feel ashamed for believing in prevention, will just contribute in causing a bigger and longer wave of infected humans, among which possibly our dears and ourselves.

Please, don't exaggerate in worrying and neither in ignoring. In medio stat virtus, they knew it already thousands of years ago.

Good luck and hold tight!