Chenlin Gu of the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France) and colleagues (the authors of today’s highlighted paper) admit they’re not medical practitioners, they’re numbers geeks. Nor do they represent (as far as I can tell) any special-interest political group and this makes their work especially pertinent as it comes without implied partisanship.
In this short paper they take a mathematical approach to the most urgent question facing governments outside China which is how to contain the spread of COVID-19?
Based on first hand data from China they observe the virus is 20x more contagious than ‘normal’ flu or about the same as the Spanish-Flu. It also has an unusually long incubation period and these two factors, the high degree of contagion plus the long incubation period require a response that takes both these factors into account.
In short the most effective response is social distancing. The imperative is to flatten the curve so hospitals don’t get overwhelmed; and that’s about it. They urge governments not to get caught up in response-politics and the good news seems to be their advice is rapidly now becoming the accepted norm.
You can access the work in full via the following link Mathematical Recommendations to Fight Against COVID-19.
Happy, healthy Sunday.