[math-fun] Pandemics: Good and Bad News
Thanks again Ed Pegg, more documentation is now available explaining our idea on the simplest possible logistic fit model: https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/SummerInsectPandemicsInTheUnitedStates/ You can see the fit to COVID-19 China data. Relative to the discrete fit function, the data has a natural bin width 5, which determines by 5*11=55 the 99.7% peak width. I recalculated the U.S. fit with most recent data, and it looks like systematic error due to Easter was a factor in the second, over-optimistic estimate. The US natural width is now back to 11 at 99.9% overlap on four points to maximum. This is more than twice China's number. If the US tail is similar to the China tail, we can extrapolate 11*7 = 77 days to 99.7% quell, or with an estimated +/- 2 error, as 63-91days to 99.7% quell. Meanwhile... The business people and politicians who are running the country have given the first, seemingly arbitrary, guideline for reopening the country, the rule of two weeks, that reopening should begin after two weeks of declining numbers, with total reopen after six weeks. How they will measure and analyze this, I do not know, but in this analysis, two weeks is about 1.3 11 day intervals from time of peak. Here is the max=1 logistic peak: {0.0126, 0.212, 0.7241, 1.00, 0.844, 0.551, 0.315, 0.168, 0.0870, 0.0443, 0.0223, 0.0112, 0.00561, 0.00281, 0.00141} One interval off maximum reaches .844, two 0.551, so the rule of two weeks could get us to less than 50% reduction; whereas, in China, two weeks is 2.8 intervals, which is closer to 60-70% reduction. Third phase reopening could land on 17% reduction. This all sounds completely horrible, especially the part about millions of people going unemployed. Yet "there is as silver lining to every cloud", and as ever, the Viceroy butterflies of Limenitis archippus are returning and should last much longer than COVID-19. If they are governing on behalf of some monarch, it is no mortal man, so I am happier to follow them! --Brad
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Brad Klee