Question

Doctor Elizabeth George says it’s crucial to know what an exponential function means in order to grasp how fast this virus is spreading.“One of things we noticed is the doubling time for this virus is two days. So if you look at italy right now there’s over forty thousand cases. But exactly one month ago there were four cases” said George.

Doctor Elizabeth George is a an astrophysicist from Vermont, she’s been living in Munich, Germany for the past six years. George says you really need to take precautions now so we don’t end up with a number that overwhelms the medical system.

“So i think its really hard for the human brain to contemplate what an exonential function means but it means that the number of cases double every two to three days.”

George also says the doubling time for the spread of the virus has remained consistent everywhere except for Italy

“If you look at the latest numbers out of Italy right now its about every five days now. Which means that their extreme lock down measures have helped.”

Bavaria, where George lives, just recently imposed a state of partial lock down. This means people can only leave the house to go to work, the doctor, or the grocery store.

“Even yesterday there were people sitting in cafes downtown. There are still people who weren’t taking it seriously. Which is why we have had government intervention because you need everyone to participate it can’t just be half the people”

George believes the only way to make the timeline for this virus shorter is to listen to experts from the world health organization and the c-d-c..

“The imperial college of London was saying anywhere between twelve and eighteen months before this is over. That is a very long time. The only way that we can essentially combat this right now is by social distancing” said George.

George also said that its very strange right now to be in the midst of a disaster and the best thing to do to make the numbers go down, is to do nothing.

After read this article,

1. Sketch what you think the graph would look like of cases each day over a two-week period, according to the article.
2. Tell us the number of cases you started with, then what pattern you used to increase them. Show the coordinates you used.  you do not need to show the actual function, just the graph.
3. Describe why you think it can be considered an exponential graph.

Please help me with this question!