Track R₀ Coronavirus in Your State
Remember when the coronavirus was brand new and we were all worried about what its R 0 might be ? R 0 , pronounced “R naught,” is a measure of how many people each infected person tends to transmit the infection to. To stop the pandemic, we need to bring that number down to less than 1. An instrument called Rt.live shows the current number of reproductions in each state, according to the latest data.
Technically, R 0 refers to the “base” reproduction number, that is, the number of people that will be infected as a hypothetical population from scratch. The real world number is called R e for the effective number of plays or R t for the number of plays at a given time.
Consider a chain letter or multi-level marketing scheme. If you and I will connect each of two people, and each of them – two people, very soon our scheme will spread throughout the world, increasing exponentially. But if the common man decides, no, I won’t pass it on, the scheme – or the pandemic – will fail.
The dividing line between these scenarios is R t equal to 1. If each person infects only one person, the pandemic does not accelerate, but it does not die either. An R t value of 1 indicates that the curve is smoothed. This is an important milestone, but not a victory.
On Rt.live we can see, in some states of R t of less than 1, and in what is still greater than 1. While that best of all things business in New Jersey with a R t of about 0.8. Arizona is doing the worst with an R t of 1.11.
To be honest, it still bothers (me) that all the numbers are so similar and relatively high. As soon as the transmission began to slow down, the governors began to open states. A flat R t of 1 is not really enough.
But it shows that locks, masks and everything else work. The estimated R 0 of the coronavirus is between 2.0 and 2.5. By lowering the R t to 1.0 or less, we have eliminated many new infections and slowed down the pandemic slightly. This is the beginning.