Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by perl4ever | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

perl4ever·

It seems to me mathematically certain that it will.

A week ago there were 170,000 cases, now there are 337,000.

337000*(337/170)^14.5 is roughly 7 billion.

14.5 weeks from now is July 1st.

So either it diminishes or it's over by July, guaranteed.

View on HN

This is not taking into account the slowdown of spread due to containment measures.

Either it will A or B, where A is "slows down". How is that "not taking into account the slowdown"?

Also not taking into account in many parts of the world there is no such thing as Flu Season.

And no one knows why.

Could you elaborate on that? Which parts?

It does. They are saying it won't continue at this rate for 15 weeks.

You can't extrapolate the spread of viruses using an exponential function, you have to use a logistic function. Unfortunately, there isn't enough data to accurately fit a logistic function right now.

My mathematical intuition may not be any good, but if you are saying it will be a sigmoid type curve, would doubling the time be plausible?

But this is not in disagreement with my comment, since this would involve slowing down.

Tell that to the "shutdown the world people". The entire basis of this response is the exponential function.

With physical distancing, it may be exponential at first, but then taper off, like it did in Wuhan: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3800632...

Even if it diminishes, it won't be over—it'll come back in the fall, at which point we still won't have a vaccine.

The Spanish Flu was worst the next winter...

Yeah, but that seems like a completely different situation. Wasn't the thing that happened then the dynamic where the sickest people were sent away from the front to the hospitals where they spread it, while the mild cases kept fighting?

Also, I said "or".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com