3 ms·
Hope you realise that mine was completely made up example just to show the basic characteristic of exponential growth in presence of static component. I chose
by lmilcin 5y ago
Hope you realise that mine was completely made up example just to show the basic characteristic of exponential growth in presence of static component.
I chose 10x growth factor to make sure the reader gets a point you can have absolutely disastrous epidemic brewing and still be invisible for many years.
With smaller reproduction rate and other confounding factors detecting a new epidemic like that could be even more difficult if you only look at total number of cases.
- Retric 5y agoSure, the point still stands. If it doubles say every 18 months numbers get really obvious before the number of cases dwarfs exiting new cases let alone existing cases. Something like 3-6 years warning before the number of new cases double. T minus 6 years it’s a 6.5% bump, T - 3 years it’s a 25% bump, T-18 months it’s a 50% bump. For a disease like HIV where existing cases dwarf new cases you get a lot of time to prepare before the number of existing cases significantly increase.