REPORT FROM LOS ALAMOS:
An RO of 6! Yikes! Is it time to panic?!?
- Regarding public health and disease, what is an R0 (r-naught)? It is a label for an infectious disease that tells us that each person with that particular illness will possibly-even probably- infect a certain number of other people.
- Why is it important to know the actual RO of SARS-cov-2; to know the rate at which it would spread if we were not practicing social distancing? Because the original number, before mitigation, in other words before we practiced social distancing, tells us what would happen if we were NOT practicing staying apart from one another.
- What is the ACTUAL RO of the virus that causes COVID-19? According to the report and Vice-President Pence’s confirmation of it, yesterday at the White House briefing, the task force has known from the beginning that SARS-cov-2 has an RO of six. THAT is why the mitigation, in other words- staying apart from one another- has been extremely important. Also, they knew less then about the effects of the virus and though more is known now, there is still so much more to know.
- What is the RO of SARS-cov-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) with mitigation, in other words because we are practicing staying away from one another? The RO with mitigation in place was at 2.28 and has dropped to between 1 and 2.
- Is there any more good news? Yes. When the test that will count the evidence of a person’s anti-bodies to the virus is available, we will test a large population of those who have been exposed but did not appear to become sick or seriously ill. Then we will know approximately how many people catch the virus and do not get sick, or contract COVID-19 and are only mildly affected. This is important because a high RO such as six would be much less dangerous if it applies to a disease that is often only mildly experienced. The need for drastic mitigation may be reduced in the future when this particular strain of Coronavirus returns.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.07.20021154v1.full.pdf
L.L. Shelton, 2020.