Question: If you started with a grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, you put two on the second, and you kept doubling, how many squares would it take before you had one grain for every person on earth?
The answer is that in just 32 squares - the first half of the board - you would have reached half of the world’s population. By the 33rd square, everyone.
The second half of the chess board - except for one square - would be empty.
Since the first recorded case of the Coronavirus on 17 Nov 2019, we have already had 20 doublings. In just 12 more, we reach the 32nd square and half the world’s population.
That means we are already two thirds on the way to COVID-19 infecting 50% of all of us.
After 8 doublings, in early January, there were just over 100 cases in China
After 16 doublings, in mid February, there over 32,000 cases
After 20 doublings, last week, there were over 500,000 cases
When we get to the 21st doubling this week, there will be over 1 million cases
And by the 24th doubling in late April, there will be 8 million cases
At the current rate, we reach the 32nd doubling by the end of June.
Is 50% infection possible? It’s the subject of many current government and expert projections. In all probability, we will likely not to reach that point. The world’s worst pandemic, the Spanish Flu, infected 33% of the world’s 1.5 billion population a century ago. We also won’t keep the same doubling rate. Social distancing and isolation measures will slow down the curve.
But either way, we are entering a phase in which the exponential curve we are on starts producing mind-blowing numbers and we see millions passing as quickly as we saw thousands just weeks ago.
And we become numb to the numbers.
For example, on Saturday China reported a total of 3,321 COVID-19 deaths in total since January. On the same day the world reported 3,518 deaths in one day: More than the entire total reported by China so far.
We passed the milestone with barely a mention.
The inability for our linear minds to grasp the true magnitude of exponential growth is told in the ancient Indian fable of “The Rice and the Chessboard”. As the story goes, when the King of India came across the inventor of the game of Chess, he was so impressed by the game, he asked the inventor to name his reward.
The inventor said “Just give me a grain of rice on the first square of the board. Then just double it on each of the 32 squares and I’ll be happy with that.” The King was so amazed by the seemingly small request of the inventor, he said to his advisors “Just make it so”.
It was only when his advisors let him know that the amount of rice required would be bigger than Mount Everest and more than the entire rice produced by all of humankind since the beginning of time that the King decided to have the inventor’s head chopped off instead.
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” - Albert A. Bartlett
We will soon be entering the fourth row of the chessboard, where the numbers will already become astronomical, and our linear systems, from hospital beds to medication to the news of millions of new infections, will test us all far more than everything that has already come before.
Bracing for the coming wave and the impact of half a million becoming a million becoming ten million, and tens of thousands of deaths becoming hundreds of thousands becoming millions, is the only way for what is a global health crisis to not also becoming a mental health one.
Exponential times calls for exponential thinking.
It also calls for exponential caring,
And exponential compassion.
“Do some small acts of kindness every day consistently, and over time it will have an exponential effect on the world.” - Amit Ray