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Not sure what you're trying to say. Of course there is a limited pool of people to infect. And various effects can cause infections to spread in multiple waves
by svara 5y ago
Not sure what you're trying to say. Of course there is a limited pool of people to infect. And various effects can cause infections to spread in multiple waves even far from herd immunity.
And yet, you can go from a few rare cases in your country to hospitals overflowing in a couple of weeks. That's because of exponential growth, obviously.
- oneoff786 5y agoThe point is that 1) exponential growth has consistently ceased before the hospitals overflowed too bad 2) exponential growth confuses readers into thinking that a small boost in spread rate means many more will be infected. This isn’t true because the exponential phase is brief and is a progression towards a ceiling defined by the graph, not an arbitrary period of time. Like what we are seeing in South Africa right now. The big problem is that people think an increase in the spreading rate will cause an exponentially higher number of infected. But it won’t. The model is not appropriate.
- svara 5y agoThat's fair, yes. High exponential growth rates make the system much harder to control though, and will easily overshoot the 'set point' (maximal hospital capacity). At a 2-3 day doubling time that overshoot could look pretty drastic.
- jamesrcole 5y ago> 1) exponential growth has consistently ceased before the hospitals overflowed too bad I believe quite a few hospitals around the world overflowed pretty badly.
- tasogare 5y agoYes, you believe. The reality is that most healthcare systems, at least in developed countries, handled the patients well enough.
- jamesrcole 5y agothat's not what I heard on Twitter, from various people who work in hospitals, nor in various news reports.