[g1313]

Curious about one point in the twitter thread by the epidemiologist, he says "Next up a very, very basic fallacy about the effect of flattening the curve. Almost *any* reasonable epidemiological model you use, from SIR to all sorts of fancy spatial PDE or agent-based approaches, will show that decreasing transmission rate decreases total epidemic size."

Some other articles I have read (such as this interview with epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in Wired) say the opposite, "By slowing it down or flattening it, we're not going to decrease the total number of cases, we're going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine"

I had mostly been thinking of flattening the curve as helping prevent fatalities by not overwhelming healthcare resources like ventilators at any one time, but does it also result in fewer overall infections? That would be nice.

[g1313]

Curious about one point in the twitter thread by the epidemiologist, he says "Next up a very, very basic fallacy about the effect of flattening the curve. Almost *any* reasonable epidemiological model you use, from SIR to all sorts of fancy spatial PDE or agent-based approaches, will show that decreasing transmission rate decreases total epidemic size."

Some other articles I have read (such as this interview with epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in Wired) say the opposite, "By slowing it down or flattening it, we're not going to decrease the total number of cases, we're going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine"

I had mostly been thinking of flattening the curve as helping prevent fatalities by not overwhelming healthcare resources like ventilators at any one time, but does it also result in fewer overall infections? That would be nice.