I've seen a graph making the rounds about the "power of social distancing". The graph charts the exponential growth curve in the transmission rate of the coronavirus.
Now, I'm not a statistician or epidemiologist, but the graph strikes me as quite deceptive. It's like the graph was produced by some dude binging on zombie/vampire/werewolf apocalypse flicks. You know how it goes. One vamp turns a victim into vamp. Two vamps can do twice what one can. So the propagation of vampires expands at an exponential rate: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32…
But isn't that awfully mechanical and simplistic? It's pure math, but everyone isn't equally susceptible, are they, so the exponential curve is quite artificial, is it not?
One might argue that social distancing is still useful to lower the infection rate. But we should avoid hyperbolic graphs based on unscientific projections that fuel hysteria.
I haven’t seen Hawk mention this but there is a thing called “Farr’s law of epidemiology” (Farr was a 19th century epidemiologist) who observed that epidemics almost always (?) trail off in a bell-shaped curve. So we see the two bell curve graphs together, one that is steep, one that is not, (not always to proper scale) but both seem to illustrate Farr’s Law.
ReplyDeletehttps://link.medium.com/LfTRAEyH34
https://nypost.com/2020/03/08/coronavirus-going-to-hit-its-peak-and-start-falling-sooner-than-you-think/
True, I haven't mentioned Farr's law, but I have mentioned that it's possible the coronavirus will hit its peak around May/June, then decline afterwards.
DeleteAlso, I've mentioned the summer months might prove a backstop against the coronavirus. At least in the northern hemisphere, but the southern hemisphere will be moving into winter.