COVID-19, like all viruses, seems to hit people differently. Most people are mildly impacted, some moderately and a few are hit very hard. The extremity in severity of symptoms between people is part of what makes this virus so unusual, hard to stop, and scary. The graph above shows just the confirmed cases in
This is one of the best visualizations I have ever seen to show how viral outbreaks work. The Washington Post offers a simulator that randomly depicts an outbreak in a town of 200 and provides four different scenarios. Below are screenshots I took of some of the results generated. The grey blue section represents people
Happy April Fools! Pretty much every blog joke I thought of came across trite, cruel or inappropriate, so I decided to forego attempts at humor this year. Instead, I’m offering up some interesting historical death facts. The infographics in the History of Pandemics are fascinating. You can see COVID-19 in comparison to other great pandemics
The CDC has published an article on super spreading events and their mitigation. In the report, the CDC cites a Japanese study that shows that all of their super spreading events started indoors. That study concluded that indoor locations were 18.7 times more likely to spread COVID-19 than open air locations. Dividing a 2-3 R0
There are two main factors that determine the potency of a pandemic: 1) How contagious the virus is; and 2) how potent the virus is. I have commented often on COVID-19’s basic reproductive ratio or R0. Potency is more difficult to quantify. There are many factors. The duration of the illness. The percentage of the
I have mentioned the Basic Reproductive Ratio (R0 or R Naught) in prior blogs. This is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where no other individuals are infected or immunized. The effective reproductive number (R) is the number of cases generated in the current state of a population
There are been 4-5 drug combination studies or trials that are showing promising results for treating COVID-19. High dose intravenous vitamin C is being used in New York with success. Intravenous injections of vitamin C have also been shown to be useful for certain types of cancer treatment or prevention. It must be intravenous as
