Have We Been Misled All Along By The R Number ?

[Sunk]

Good article by ZEYNEP TUFEKCI in The Atlantic

It argues that we have been fooled by the R contagion rate, and that we should instead have been tracking the dispersal rate. Clusters, and whole ares are the result of one highly contagious individual than hundreds of carriers.

// Multiple studies from the beginning have suggested that as few as 10 to 20 percent of infected people may be responsible for as much as 80 to 90 percent of transmission, and that many people barely transmit it. //

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

// This highly skewed, imbalanced distribution means that an early run of bad luck with a few super-spreading events, or clusters, can produce dramatically different outcomes even for otherwise similar countries.

Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor of epidemiology and complex systems at Northeastern, told me that this has been a huge challenge, especially for health authorities in Western societies, where the pandemic playbook was geared toward the flu—and not without reason, because pandemic flu is a genuine threat. However, influenza does not have the same level of clustering behavior. //

[Peter Pedant]

o god sometimes it is painful to see the innumerate trying to 'do' numbers
[You have touched on my most bitter thought [860] and moved my ever-renewed pity ....Antigone]

gems from this column
//No point in looking back now, we are not getting the deaths or mega hospital admissions,//
if you say so - New Judge - precedent and what has gone before has no meaning at all for you


"Infections are doubling every fortnight [despite one of his mates producing a "Domesday scenario" that relied on them doubling every week]";
yes boys - doubling ( very good!) every fortnight is bad but not as bad as doubling every week
because you see - start with 50 then in a fortnight they may have double and would be 100
where as if it were every week the end would be - 200 - which is an norful lot more than 50

and the lastest data in this mornings interview is that the doubling time is 13 d

oh god I love a judge saying - the lesson from History is that there are no lessons from History
next stop - the Supreme Court !