Here in New York the coronavirus cases are exploding—we're on the steep part of the curve.

Now,you've probably heard about the basic reproduction number,R0,or R-naught.

And that's basically how many people an infected person goes on to infect themselves.

The other night, I happened to see a tweet that showed just how big a difference there is over 10 cycles of transmission between a basic reproduction number of 1.3 and a basic reproduction number of 3.

The different was astounding.

The 1.3 after 10 cycles infected on average 14 other people total.

The basic reproduction number of 3.0 led to 59,000.

Looking at those numbers was startling.

So I got a calculator out.

And I'm going to repeat this exercise that I did with the calculator.