This
is very good! But I don't want to be so arrogant as to say that even
as scientist I have never fallen into any of these traps ... I can only
say that I always try not to, and I welcome being called on it if I do!
Italy was viewed for a while as an example NOT to follow... quite the contrary! Yes, I’m biased, as that’s my native country, but the facts of Italy’s behavior, both at the level of government and people, during this pandemic cannot be denied. This article explains very well what has been happening as Italy is starting its own (deliberately slow) path to opening up. As Italians move toward a less stringent regimen to minimize their exposure to the coronavirus, they can take pride in an unusual collective effort. nytimes.com Opinion | How Italy Coped, and Will Keep Coping As Italians move toward a less stringent regimen to minimize their… As Italians move toward a less stringent regimen to minimize their exposure to the coronavirus, they can take pride in an unusual collective effort.
The problem with epidemics is that our brains were not "wired" for exponential mathematics. There is a story about an ancient king who was bargaining with a merchant about a payment in the form of rice. Finally the merchant asked for a chess board. He said: "all I want is a grain of rice on the first square, 2 on the second square, 4 on the third ...and so on, doubling the amount on each square." "That's all?" Said the king... "granted!" Unfortunately for him it turned out t hat there was not enough rice in the entire kingdom to pay the merchant! So what's the lesson? The lesson is that if every infected person infects 2 you have the same mathematics... and the time to stop the process is when the numbers are still so small that the problem is not yet obvious, So effective action will always seem premature and alarmistic. Any action needs to be proportional NOT to the present numbers but the numbers to be expected in a wee...
Some tentative "good" news and some ... not so good. A few posts ago I showed a graph of a model of the daily new cases predicted in Italy. The graph shows new cases beginning to decrease on Mar 18. It was then revised to March 23. The model is shown again here with the actual data, that tracks it pretty well. If this holds up it means two important things: 1) they are finally on their way to "flattening the curve" (the graph needs to get down to 0, and 2) the assumptions ab out the main modes of spread of the virus are correct, and the "stay home" and closure measures (enacted about 3 weeks ago) are working. What's not so good? Look at the third graph. It shows the number of cases as they increased in different countries. South Korea (brown) was ready with testing and strong immediate containment measures. Italy (red graph) obviously screwed up somewhere (in spite of what I saw as quick strong measures... but that's another st...
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