I've been publicly wondering for a while why the spread of the pandemic is so uneven. This paper has me pretty persuaded that the Japanese public health people were right, and spread is entirely dominated by a few superspreading events. https://covid.idmod.org/data/Stochasticity_heterogeneity_transmission_dynamics_SARS-CoV-2.pdf …
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I'm saying this not to convince anyone, but because people were accusing me of being coy when I said I had no working theory. I didn't, and now I do. I'm looking forward to what the scientisticians come up with in support or against it.
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The key implication of the theory is that most sick people don't pass the disease on to others, but those who do are incredibly infectious. One consequence of this would be that the entire "anonymous contact tracing app" effort is completely futile, one reason I like the theory
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The bigger consequence is that if we can understand the nature of the superspreading events, it's possible the pandemic could be stopped very quickly. Optimism is off-brand for me, but this is the first explanation I've seen that fits the observations well and it forces my hand
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Replying to @Pinboard
It also potentially means that we can make social distancing a lot more tolerable- allow small groups of friends to occasionally meet- without significantly compromising the value of it
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Yes, it would be extremely good news if proven true.
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