Henry Baker <hbaker1(a)pipeline.com> wrote:
> Reading between the lines, I'm coming to the conclusion that
> the concept of "R_e" ("effective" R), may be fatally flawed,
> as it tries to capture some sort of "mean" or "average" R in
> an inherently exponential setting.
A geometric mean is meaningful in an exponential setting.
> Thus, if one person has an R_e of 0.9 and another person has an R_e
> of 40.0, there isn't a good way to average the two R_e's to compute
> a composite R_e.
Are you sure none of the power means will do it? The higher power
means give larger numbers more weight than smaller numbers.
> For example, in Massachusetts in the early going, almost 100% of the
> confirmed cases stemmed from a single meeting of a single company in
> a single downtown Boston hotel.
No smooth model will work for tiny numbers. Fortunately for modelers,
and unfortunately for everyone else, the numbers are no longer tiny.
> So if it is true that there are "super spreaders", both in terms of
> individual people and/or individual events, there must be a better
> way to quickly identify and isolate these people and events other
> than putting the entire world on lockdown.
Unfortunately, there's no way to know who those people are until far
too late. Ideally we would have plentiful, inexpensive, reliable
tests for both the virus and antibodies to it, so that everyone could
be tested once a week. Those who are negative for the virus would be
free to associate with each other, but not with those who are positive
for the virus. Those who are positive for the virus would be free to
associate with each other, but not with those who are negative for the
virus. Those who are positive for antibodies but negative for the
virus would be free to associate with everyone.
Unfortunately, current antibody tests are not only scarce, but have
such a high error rate that, if given to everyone, the majority of
positives would be false positives.
> Perhaps fractures in glass or metal may have relevance, as it may
> only take a single flaw in a crystal structure to destroy the entire
> structure.
It's quick, easy, inexpensive, and reliable to detect fractures, e.g.
with ultrasound. Unfortunately, it's not yet easy, inexpensive, or
reliable to detect either viruses or antibodies.
Another approach would be to find a way to mass-produce inexpensive,
reliable, and self-contained biohazard suits, which would allow
everyone to freely associate, though people would need to eat alone.
The suits would need power, but for stationary jobs and social events
that could be done from an ordinary power outlet.
