3Blue1Brown has a great video explainer here on the exponential growth of epidemics that simplifies the spread of Coronavirus down into two basic factors:
1. how many people someone sick is exposed to
2. the probability of each exposure in spreading the infection
So really there's only two things that everybody can do to slow down and (hopefully) stop the spread of Coronavirus:
- Lower as much as possible the number of exposures you come into contact with by avoiding crowds, staying away from others in public, and touching as few things as possible
- Lower as much as possible your probability of spread by coughing/sneezing into your elbow, wash/disinfect your hands often, and try not to touch your face
The higher each factor is, the more you should work to lower the other; if you're sick you should limit the number of exposures to 0 by staying home and isolating yourself, and vice versa.
Even what my seem like a small lowering of the growth rate (from say 15% to 5% assuming 21,000 initial infected population) over the course of two months makes a huge difference in total number of infected people
Coronavirus is an extremely complex issue facing the world right now and countries are responding in different ways. I believe the main difference between nations that are limiting the virus' growth and those that aren't is how they view the spread of the disease: is it more of a math or people problem?
Those that view it primarily as a math problem were quick to institute measures that go against social and cultural norms (lockdowns, quick testing and quarantining, etc.) - they risked overreacting because they understood with exponential growth things could get bad quick. They understood fat tails. Those that view it as a people problem were quick to ease fears or cast blame and slow to push back against normal everyday life - they risked underreacting because they didn't want to disturb life or economic markets.
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Here are updated charts from yesterday's post (through 3/14/20) showing the different exponential trendline growth rates of countries (steeper trendline means more growth). While the accuracy of the numbers may be off, their growth rates relative to each other will still be important.
