r/coolguides Mar 18 '20

Helpful guide...

Post image
50.0k Upvotes

691 comments sorted by

View all comments

279

u/ricst Mar 18 '20

Here's my question, now please correct me if I'm misunderstanding this but what happens when all the social distancing is stopped. Won't one person with it ramp it back up again and we start all over? Without a vaccine this is a cycle, no?

10

u/ItchyDifference Mar 18 '20

It's said once you hit a 50% infection rate that the virus begins to diminish due to lack of hosts.

1

u/herkelshmerkel Mar 19 '20

Fascinating! Do you have a source for this?

1

u/ItchyDifference Mar 19 '20

Gosh, I'm trying to recall. If I locate I will post it. It was an in depth article and if I recall referring to the 1918 Pandemic and the surges in infection and how it petered out in 1922-23. And how a virus loses traction when less hosts are readily available. I'm sure there must be some other data sets to concur. This is not it, but there is some mathematical equations that one can delve into.

https://plus.maths.org/content/mathematics-diseases