In the first week of the UK’s lockdown, a co-worker shared this article from the Washington Post. I was inspired by the great simulations of how diseases spread and the demonstrations of how some social distancing measures can help to reduce the spread.
In response to reading the article, I decided to recreate the simulations and add far more additional detail to them. In this article I will discuss some particular scenarios of interest. For comparison, all scenarios have been run for the same length of time but in some cases this isn’t enough time for the disease to fully run its course.
Note from the author: Matt Crooks is a mathematician working as a data scientist. He is not a health professional, epidemiologist, or government advisor. While the simulations in this article are intended to demonstrate certain real phenomena they are not representative of the actual response of the virus to goverment interventions. To learn more about the coronavirus pandemic, you can click here.
No response scenario
The first scenario I looked at involves no intervention from the government. It also excludes the possibility of people developing an immunity and so can catch the virus again if they come into contact with an infected person.
