Who Survives and Who Dies After Shipwreck

COVID-19 fatalities
Days to hit
10k - 41 days
20k - 5
30k - 5
40k - 5
50k - 4
60k - 4


I still don't understand two things.
1. What makes people so confident that we don't hit 100k before mid-May?
2. What makes people think that - other than our fondness for groups of 10 (says the guy typing with 10 fingers) - this will pause or even slow down at 100k? Particularly if we loosen regulations.

I'd love to think that it will take 6 days to hit 70k, 10 more days to hit 80k, another 30 days to hit 90k and 100 more days to hit 100k. That is, I'd love to think this is slowing down.

But is there anything to support that expectation? Other than some combination of hope and fatigue? Am I missing something?

Meanwhile, a study of shipwrecks is revealing about which sort of communities thrive.
In 1864, two ships wrecked onto the same island near New Zealand within months of each other. Neither knew of the other.

The survivors of the first wreck found themselves at the base of a cliff that one was too weak to scale. The rest left him behind to die.

The survivors of the other wreck, by contrast, risked their lives to save the life of another in the effort to first get to shore.

One community was founded with the clear philosophy of, "We're all in this alone." The other with the clear philosophy of, "We're all in this together."

After being cut off from civilization for 12 months, only 3 of the original 19 shipwreck survivors from "we're in this alone" group were still alive. By contrast, every one of the "we're in this together" survivors were still alive 19 months later.

Willingness to sacrifice to help others made a difference. In another wreck from the mid-1800s, a crew member was bringing the captain's chest of gold to shore, an amount equal to $23 million today. The captain ordered him to leave the chest and rescue a girl instead. This visible sacrifice set the tone for how the survivors would look out for each other. The captain and many of the survivors were LDS and the whole group was cooperative and caring. 2 months later, all 51 of the 51 were still alive.
Cooperation and care for each other turns out to be a great predictor of how well these involuntary social experiments in shipwrecks do. There is probably a lesson there.