News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers. Parent comment

Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by IAmGraydon on Saturday March 21, 2020 @10:15AM (#22646617)
You can’t reduce the basic reproduction number (R0) of a pathogen. You can reduce doubling time and similar metrics of the actual spread, but R0 is a fixed number. What you are referring to is the effective reproduction number, which is the rate of spread in a population at it’s current state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by watwut on Saturday March 21, 2020 @11:19AM (#22647082)
Change in behavior can change basic reproduction number. That is what happened with SARS. Making basic reproduction number smaller is whole point of those curfew laws and of closing shops we now have. It is also the point of washing hands often and keeping distance.

It is defined as "expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection". And that is possible to influence by behavior. If no one even meets anybody, no sick person can generate next case. If people live in over-crowded houses, one person will infect many more.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by usaar333 on Saturday March 21, 2020 @11:13AM (#22647033)
Huh?

"R0 is not a biological constant for a pathogen as it is also affected by other factors such as environmental conditions and the behaviour of the infected population."

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by crankylinuxuser on Saturday March 21, 2020 @11:38AM (#22647253)
Pretty way of saying "Summer heat causes these things to go in remission" by lowering the R0 for a time.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by notfromhere on Saturday March 21, 2020 @02:38PM (#22648749)
Given that there are cases in hot, humid climates now, I wouldn’t expect summer to save us
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by leethargo on Saturday March 21, 2020 @10:31AM (#22646713)
From what I've read recently, I agree with this distinction. It's simply a matter of definition. R_0 is the infection rate without any measures taken. Sometimes, R is used for the net infection (e.g. with social distancing).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by adenadel on Saturday March 21, 2020 @11:21AM (#22647106)
Read the first sentence of the second paragraph.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by mistrial9 on Saturday March 21, 2020 @10:17AM (#22646628)
citation please
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by IAmGraydon on Saturday March 21, 2020 @10:41AM (#22646787)
Added. It’s all in the first paragraph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the coronavirus from infecting healthcare workers by jacquesm on Saturday March 21, 2020 @12:00PM (#22647418)
Maybe you should read a bit further than the first paragraph for your future citations?

"R0 is not a biological constant for a pathogen as it is also affected by other factors such as environmental conditions and the behaviour of the infected population."

[ Parent | on HN ]