5 ms·

In just 2 months it will have killed 10 billion people!

mythrwy 7y ago
Sounds like a friend who in early 2018 told me that if Ethereum kept going up at even half the rate it had been for the next 3 years he would be retired! I sadly had to pop his bubble by pointing out that value represented more than the sum of money in the entire world.
- zepolen 7y ago
  That was the joke.
  - mythrwy 7y ago
    Yep. I found it funny too. (Sadly my example wasn't a joke).
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
You have to ask yourself what drives exponential growth, and what eventually breaks the exponential. What drives exponential growth in an epidemic is the fact that each person infects some number of other people, on average. The more people are sick, the more people get infected each day. Growth is proportional to size, so you've got an exponential curve. What stops exponential growth in an epidemic is when so many people are immune that the average sick person isn't able to infect more than one other person. At that point, the epidemic dies off exponentially. You only reach the exponential decrease phase once a significant fraction of the population has immunity. That only happens once they've gotten sick and recovered. Based on the transmissibility of COVID-19, it's expected to eventually infect 60% of the world population, unless a vaccine is developed before it does.
- zepolen 7y ago
  Woosh.
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    You made fun of the extrapolation of an exponential by extrapolating beyond the size of the human population. Your point was obvious, but if you meant to downplay point made by the person you were responding to, then you were wrong to do so. The exponential can indeed be extrapolated for many e-foldings, until the number of infected people is a significant fraction to the total population.
    - xscott 7y ago
      Yeah, that "can" happen. Other things "can" also happen... If you've got a real prediction, why don't you say it? And you moved the goal posts from "deaths" to "infected". I'm not a huge fan of sarcasm, but I think zepolen was right to point out that blindly predicting exponential growth is ridiculous. The world is more complicated than some sophomore level differential equations would indicate.
      - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
        It's not "blindly" predicting exponential growth. Epidemics grow exponentially, for very concrete and well understood reasons. There are a number of people making fun of or playing down that fact here, which is incredibly foolish. We're facing a serious epidemic, and we ignore basic epidemiology at our own peril. > If you've got a real prediction, why don't you say it? The doubling time of the number of infected people will continue to be about three days, until strenuous social distancing measures are implemented (or in the worst case, herd immunity is reached). The rate of newly detected cases will begin to bend downwards about 1-2 weeks after the introduction of such measures, due to the delay between infection and onset of symptoms. > And you moved the goal posts from "deaths" to "infected". The number of deaths is proportional to the number of people infected.
    - zepolen 7y ago
      The generalization about always following an exponential increase until herd immunity is completely wrong. Proof: China's infection rate https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

Sounds like a friend who in early 2018 told me that if Ethereum kept going up at even half the rate it had been for the next 3 years he would be retired! I sadly had to pop his bubble by pointing out that value represented more than the sum of money in the entire world.

zepolen 7y ago
That was the joke.
- mythrwy 7y ago
  Yep. I found it funny too. (Sadly my example wasn't a joke).

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

You have to ask yourself what drives exponential growth, and what eventually breaks the exponential. What drives exponential growth in an epidemic is the fact that each person infects some number of other people, on average. The more people are sick, the more people get infected each day. Growth is proportional to size, so you've got an exponential curve. What stops exponential growth in an epidemic is when so many people are immune that the average sick person isn't able to infect more than one other person. At that point, the epidemic dies off exponentially. You only reach the exponential decrease phase once a significant fraction of the population has immunity. That only happens once they've gotten sick and recovered. Based on the transmissibility of COVID-19, it's expected to eventually infect 60% of the world population, unless a vaccine is developed before it does.

zepolen 7y ago
Woosh.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  You made fun of the extrapolation of an exponential by extrapolating beyond the size of the human population. Your point was obvious, but if you meant to downplay point made by the person you were responding to, then you were wrong to do so. The exponential can indeed be extrapolated for many e-foldings, until the number of infected people is a significant fraction to the total population.
  - xscott 7y ago
    Yeah, that "can" happen. Other things "can" also happen... If you've got a real prediction, why don't you say it? And you moved the goal posts from "deaths" to "infected". I'm not a huge fan of sarcasm, but I think zepolen was right to point out that blindly predicting exponential growth is ridiculous. The world is more complicated than some sophomore level differential equations would indicate.
    - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
      It's not "blindly" predicting exponential growth. Epidemics grow exponentially, for very concrete and well understood reasons. There are a number of people making fun of or playing down that fact here, which is incredibly foolish. We're facing a serious epidemic, and we ignore basic epidemiology at our own peril. > If you've got a real prediction, why don't you say it? The doubling time of the number of infected people will continue to be about three days, until strenuous social distancing measures are implemented (or in the worst case, herd immunity is reached). The rate of newly detected cases will begin to bend downwards about 1-2 weeks after the introduction of such measures, due to the delay between infection and onset of symptoms. > And you moved the goal posts from "deaths" to "infected". The number of deaths is proportional to the number of people infected.
  - zepolen 7y ago
    The generalization about always following an exponential increase until herd immunity is completely wrong. Proof: China's infection rate https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/