Hat tip to kottke.org.
This video provides a good explanation of the concept of exponential growth, and particularly why there is so much concern about a pandemic that so far has claimed relatively few lives.
The reason, as explained in the video, is the rate of growth of the disease and not the absolute numbers. Right now there is no cure for the disease and no way to prevent some spread of the disease.
But if the rate of growth can be controlled in the early stages of the disease’s spread, it can be kept under control.
One point made in the video is that there is no such things as exponential growth continuing indefinitely. At some point the hockey-stick pattern on the growth chart becomes an S-curve and then a bell curve. But with the spread of an infectious disease, the leveling off may not start until half or more of the vulnerable population is infected, and millions of people are doomed to die.
LINKS
Exponential Growth and Epidemics by Jason Kottke on kottke.org. Comments on the video.
Coronavirus, by the numbers by James Gorman for The New York Times. Another explanation of statistics on infectious disease.
Media Paywalls Dropped to COVID-19 Crisis Coverage by Jason Kottke on kottke.org. Links to major newspapers and other publications that have eliminated paywalls for coronavirus coverage.
Looking for COVID-19 Under the Streetlight by Mike the Mad Biologist. Why mistaken priorities for testing probably allow many new U.S. coronavirus infections to go undetected.
The Case for Canceling Everything by Yascha Mounk for The Atlantic.
Coronavirus Bungling Is What We Voted For by Ian Welsh. In the USA, the UK and Canada.
Tags: Coronavirus, COVID-19, Infectious Disease
Phil Ebersole's Blog 
March 13, 2020 at 4:50 pm |
The second graph illustrates the point nicely, but the shape of the curve isn’t the normal distribution of statistics. The number of cases may level off or decline; if it declines, it won’t necessarily go down to zero.
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March 14, 2020 at 2:36 am |
The more we slow the spread the more effective our response can be. It prevents extreme overcrowding and overcrowding obviously detracts from the level of care offered. The longer the spread is delayed, the better we get at managing the illness. Give 6 moths to a year and there will be a vaccination but by that time most will have been exposed already.
However, delaying the spread may not be easy. We are neither a dictatorship nor a police state. The state is limited in what it can tell people to do. The devastation of severe economic hardships might exceed that from the disease itself even if it could. Controls that might work in China are impossible here.
Many infected people are asymptomatic, particularly young people. Others experience it as a mild cold. Once you include these people the mortality rate drops to less than 1%. South Korea has a mortality rate of .6%. (US hospitals typically do not test unless you become seriously ill.) Not a lot of comfort – as you and I are both in the higher mortality age ranges. But the world is not ending and will bounce back soon enough.
In the mean time practice social isolation, wash your hand often and don’t touch your face.
It appears that it is not the virus itself that causes death. It triggers a massive immune response, “cytokine storm syndrome” which is what causes multiple organ failure among other things. We have drugs on hand to fight this. They have been shown to be effective in China and Italy. Roche has got permission to spool up production.
China has a horrid medical system. They sat on this epidemic for a month, denying it existed, even though people were dying and the doctors didn’t have a clue what was going on. That’s why their mortality rates are so high. And even then there’s no assurance they’ve told us the truth of what went on. Dictatorships have a habit of suppressing unfortunate truths and China certainly has both the means and will to do so.
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March 14, 2020 at 4:12 am |
I talked to my ex-BF yesterday. I haven’t talked to him in over a month. He told me he’s been sick for a week, lost an entire week’s worth of work (he’s a union pipefitter/welder). He said it was “the flu” but the more he told me his symptoms, the more I thought, gee, it’s the coronavirus. He said he had a high fever, he could barely breathe, was so weak he could barely get out of bed. He has COPD from years of smoking & from the effects of welding. I asked him if he had gone to the doctor & gotten tested but he said he was too sick to go anywhere. His main problem seems to be that he stopped eating … he was too sick to eat. I stressed to him that he had to eat & he had to stay hydrated. He lives in the middle of nowhere … his house is literally in the middle of a corn field (which is just muddy stalks right now) so it’s not like he’s able to spread this to anyone. But of course, he was spreading it before he got the symptoms so his entire crew might be sick now. He said he was going to try to get to work on Monday, since he can’t afford to miss any more work. Union job or not, he doesn’t get paid sick leave.
There aren’t any “official” cases here in Buffalo but I’m hearing stories like this … unofficial cases.
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