March 30

3/30 – We all want to know when life will be back to normal. Unfortunately, there are too many unknowns in trying to forecast the trajectory of COVID-19, the biggest problem being lack of widespread testing. Here’s what we do know. The lag from exposure to death is at least one month. If we currently have 2468 U.S. deaths, then given a 1.5% death rate, it means we had roughly 164,533 cases a month ago. With a 6-day doubling rate, we could have over 5M cases right now. Most mild cases are going undiagnosed. The point is that we can slow this thing but there is no way to stop it short of a vaccine. It’s going to run its course. It’s going to be ugly. It won’t peak for months. What’s happening in NYC is coming to a city near you. It’s time for all of us to start thinking outside of the box about our industry, about conserving cash flow and about what another 3-6 months of this might mean.