Outbreak – playable simulations of a disease outbreak

This stuff drives me crazy. I know the author of this (and of the linked Washington Post article) are trying to help people gain clarity, but it worries me that it only serves to accelerate fear and panic.

These articles are making it sound as if the exponential part of the curve will just continue on forever until it consumes the whole population. The (self-admittedly) overly simplified simulations aren't helping either.

Front this article >

And here's the kicker: even if we manage to "flatten the curve" enough to meaningfully space out the case load, we're still positioned to lose millions and millions of lives.

From the WaPo article >

This so-called exponential curve has experts worried. If the number of cases were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred million cases in the United States by May.

Still, without any measures to slow it down, covid-19 will continue to spread exponentially for months. To understand why, it is instructive to simulate the spread of a fake disease through a population.

It will continue to spread exponentially for months!? Millions & millions of cases & or deaths? These are really sloppy and dangerous ideas to put in peoples head. They are just plain wrong, and not how pandemics play out in reality.

Here is what the CDC says about how pandemics spread (Under the 'COVID-19 Now a Pandemic' heading) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summ...

Pandemics of respiratory disease follow a certain progression outlined in a “Pandemic Intervals Framework.” Pandemics begin with an investigation phase, followed by recognition, initiation, and acceleration phases. The peak of illnesses occurs at the end of the acceleration phase, which is followed by a deceleration phase, during which there is a decrease in illnesses. Different countries can be in different phases of the pandemic at any point in time and different parts of the same country can also be in different phases of a pandemic.

Different parts of the country are seeing different levels of COVID-19 activity. The United States nationally is currently in the initiation phases, but states where community spread is occurring are in the acceleration phase. The duration and severity of each phase can vary depending on the characteristics of the virus and the public health response.

So no, it will NOT continue exponentially for months. Especially given the amount of isolation/ quarantine measures and canceling of large events taking place. I think it is reasonable to expect these measures will help us progress through to the deceleration phase faster.

Further-more, there is more and more evidence coming out suggesting the in China where it started, they have already entered the deceleration phase. This should be encouraging news for us in USA where it is just beginning.

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/newsfeed/2020/03/big-dr...

What happens once China starts dismantling mitigations currently in place, given that the majority of the population is still naive to the virus? Is it reasonable to expect they can wait out the virus disappearing completely by tracking all active cases until they have recovered?

This is missing a couple things:

1) Cells should have random demographics such as male/female and age, and a virus could respond differently to them

2) The virus should have some capability for mutation as it spreads. (probability of changing variables from the initial configuration by some percent)

To try to answer my own question: it may be reasonable, however the problem of imported cases from other countries not doing the same still remains. This can restart the epidemic anew.

You should totally add this to https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/