05-25-2020, 06:06 PM
(05-25-2020, 07:21 AM)Mikebert Wrote:(05-24-2020, 09:35 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: I don't think it's obvious that the measures that are currently failing to control the number of cases in the "hot zone" are the ones that should be continued.
I live in an urban suburb of Boston, a hot area of a hot zone. We had a fairly severe shutdown with people basically going to grocery and drug stores and nowhere else. This reduced travel and should have reduced the viral reproduction rate R by a factor of 10,
I don't understand how it is obvious that the measures being used to control the number of cases in the "hot zone" are failing. Over the last month, the daily death rate has fallen by 75%. Over the same period of time in the rest of the country the death rate has been slightly up (6%).
Where are you getting your numbers? Wikipedia numbers show the daily death rate, averaged over 7 days to smooth out low weekend reporting, is a little over 60. A month ago, it was about 150. That's a factor of 2.5 reduction, not a factor of 4 reduction.
In contrast, the previous month, there was about a factor of 40 increase. If R is 3 for a factor of 40 increase in a month, then the factor of 2.5 reduction reflects an R of about 0.8.
If you look at South Korean numbers, their increase rate was even faster - a factor of 10 in new cases in a week - but their decrease rate was just as fast, with new cases falling by a factor of 10 the next week. They cut their R to something like 0.3 or 0.4. So what did they do that we didn't do?