UNDERSTANDING THE NUMBERS ####

Humans, can’t see further than a certain “distance”. Truly understanding a hundred miles; how much space does 1 million dollars will take is just simply difficult to imagine, and thus fully understand.

The same goes with global events. What is the size of a hurricane? How does a mass immigration event look like if you were to look at a map depicting the movement of people? Can you visualise the interactions between particles in a nuclear reaction?

I have a technical background so I have often thought about our universe and planet in this perspective. However, most people simply aren’t trained to think and see things in this fashion. But you don’t need equations and a fancy training/background to understand how things work and what the numbers mean. In fact too many people focus on the numbers and get overwhelmed doing so. What is truly important is to understand how things behave related to the environment they are in. I will make an attempt to lay it out here in “laymen’s terms” of you will. I am not a mathematics or science genius, I am a layman… if I can’t explain something in laymen’s terms then I basically don’t get it myself. So fingers crossed.

POPULATION GROWTH

First we need to have a basic understanding of population growth. If we consider population growth in a year, you consider two things. The number of births and the number of deaths. If the number of births and the number of deaths are exactly the same, then the population hasn’t grown at all right?

Mathematically we can define this with just one variable, R. R = Births/Deaths. So 10 births and 10 deaths means that R = 10/10 = 1. If birth are more than deaths… say 15 then R = 15/10 = 1.5. If the number of deaths are more then R = 10/15 = 0.7. Essentially:

If R is greater than 1 (R >1): Population grew
If R is equal to 1 (R = 1): Population remained the same
If R is less than 1 (R<1): Population decreased

I will call R, the population growth ratio.

COVID SPREAD IN TERMS OF POPULATION GROWTH RATIO

Now that we have established a single variable that helps us understand population growth, lets try and apply it to the coronavirus pandemic. First of all, people need to realise that government are in fact not trying to entirely eliminate the virus at this stage. They can always hope they can, but the vast majority of governments are hoping to control its spread in order to avoid completely overloading the health care systems, the economy, and avoid mass casualties in a very very short amount of time. Let’s first start with a visual aid shall we?

First some parameters

• We know on average, without mitigations in place a COVID Infected person (CIP) will transmit the disease to 2 other people on average.
• The incubation period for the virus is 2 weeks
• During these 2 weeks the person is contagious even though they are not showing symptoms. They are asymptomatic.

The image above depicts how the COVID spread would proceed over the course of just 4 weeks. It seems pretty straight forward right? But remember that part I mentioned that human beings have a problem understanding massive problems? Without taking out your calculator or thinking too much about it, how do you think the numbers would look like, say after 12 weeks (2.7 months)? How about 26 weeks (6 months)? Well, as usual it is better to represent it in the form of a visual aid.

If you had started with just one CIP (coronavirus infected person) after just about 3 months without any mitigations in place you would have 2048 people to have infected with the virus. And after just 6 months pretty much all fo the United States will have contracted the virus (335 million people).

Note that this is a little simplistic. R is in fact not 2. Though 2 people get infected on average by a CIP. You would have to take into account the fact that people recover as well. As such in reality the R would actually between 1 and 2. I did a quick check, and accounting for those who recover, the result would be a delay of total population infection by just 2-3 weeks.

CONSIDER MORTALITY RATE

The mortality rate for COVID 19 is all over the place globally. We know now the there are several strains of the virus (since viruses mutate), with Europe and the East coast having most like experienced the more aggressive variant. The mortality rate in Italy was a whopping 14.5%.

But lets be a tad optimistic shall we. According to these numbers the mortality rate in the US is 6%. If the entire US population of roughly 300 million people were to contract the virus we would be looking at an approximate death count of 18 million people. However, this is taking everyone into account, which isn’t exactly fair. If you are healthy and younger than 65 years of age, your changes of surviving the virus is quite high. Something in the 90s. So lets simplify things and say that about a third of the population would be susceptible to dying by the virus. This brings the 18 million death toll to 6 million. Even so, were you to spread 6 million deaths evenly over 7 months, it would mean that 86.6 thousand deaths per day.

But why are we not seeing 86 thousand deaths per day? Because in reality the death toll would follow the exponential growth graph. Just as the spread would accelerate over time, so will the deaths. These numbers are to give us a feel for the impact that we are looking at.

WRAPPING UP

Our governments want to manage the spread of the virus. In order to do so, measures are taken to specifically decrease the population growth ratio R to below 1, as much as possible. The smaller the number the faster the disease dies out. But there are a lot of things to factor in, with the economy being just one very complex thing to factor in. Even when they ease open the economy, it is imperative for them to monitor the situation and to void R = 1 or R >1. If the system is at a point where it can manage the number of cases there is, without being burdened, perhaps R = 1 is still acceptable in a worse case scenario. But for R > 1 the health care system will eventually be overwhelmed, which would in turn have a direct impact on the economy anyway.

We all know that politicians care very much about the economy (cough cough… money). It is silly to actually think that they are willing to go into lock downs which will cause economies to come to a stand still, if it weren’t absolutely necessary and serious. Any one with a technical back ground should be able to understand how this works. Any business man should also understand how this works. After all all of them would want a situation where R >1 when it concerns their bank accounts. So be sceptical of those who just brush this off. They are likely not at risk people, or have a life situation where they are less likely to come into contact with the virus compared to the normal population.

As usual, be mindful, stay safe, and listen to the public health care experts tasked with the safety of the public health.