Dear Members,
We need to be prepared for this virus. I don’t think you can trust the Chinese Government to be transparent about what is going on. What we are hearing is that the virus is Asymptomatic. This means that you can carry it around with you infecting all the people you come into contact with for weeks before you get any symptoms.
The spread of these virus’s is typically exponential. That means that the more people have it the faster it spreads. So the trick is to contain it by not letting people meet each other. This is problematic when you don’t know who has it.
Let’s look at the maths. You can think of the exponential model as measuring how fast the virus spreads.
Let’s say our model is that it doubles every three days. The time period is a measure of how long you have before you loose control completely, but is is the number itself that really counts.
Let us suppose that only a few people in the world have it. The number might be 0.0001. If that starts doubling every three days or so, it will grow very slowly to start off with then take off.
Please see the Chart below. With a statring point of R – 0.0001 and three days doubling period
After one month R – 0.05
After two months R = 52
After three months R = 54,000
Look at the weekly numbers it takes 15 weeks to reach 1. In the next 15 weeks it reached 54,000.
The problem that we have is that we have no idea how far the virus has spread Asymptomatically. So we dont know if we are on Week 1 or Week 25.
There is only one way to manage this and that is to stop people meeting. Right Now.
Stop the Planes. Dont let any non uk nationals back into the country. Quarenteen UK Nationals comming home in Field hospitals near the airports. Have specialist medical teams on hand.
At all costs keep the Virus out of our Hospitals and Schools or it will spread like Wildfire.
If we don’t handle this right, this could be very expensive both for our communitoes and our economy.
Let us hope that our public sector are fully prepared for this, and have been for years. They have had years to prepare. Bill Gates said that this was the Number on Threat to Civilisation 6 years ago, so they knew. We pay them £150,billion every year to protect us, so they had better be. So why do I feel nervous about this?
Incidentally after 4 months the R number is 55 MILLION 54,975,581
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