COVID has a very skewed distribution in its transmission patterns. You can't beat back a threat if you don't take into account how it operates, and this skew—its overdispersion— should affect the way we do *everything* from tracing to testing. That's what countries like Japan do.
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Folks asking me if this skew—that a few account for most infections while most don't transmit—is due to the people & what it means. That's all in the article.
It's not just a mathematical curiosity; it has big practical consequences. Also in the article.https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/ …21 replies 273 retweets 1,042 likesShow this thread -
Wow. New paper from India, tracing ~500K contacts for ~85,000 cases. They did not find a single positive contact for 70.7% of infected people. Zero! About 5% accounted for 80% of transmission—not in my piece because it's out today! That's overdispersion. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/09/29/science.abd7672.full …pic.twitter.com/w5rdctMu4V
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Look, the science doesn't fit into the lockdown/anti-lockdown fights. It's not how much we restrict, but whether we target the right things. Overdispersion means the right measures take us a long way, but also that we can't relax: It can quickly flip back. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/ …pic.twitter.com/hGe1ug1YVP
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zeynep tufekci Retweeted Justin Fox
See this thread for some great early pieces (some I link to in my piece) explaining the importance of superspreading and overdispersion, and if you want, also take a look at Japan or Hong Kong early epi documents. We're so slow to learn from the evidence.https://twitter.com/foxjust/status/1311352169896071169 …
zeynep tufekci added,
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Also, if you suspect that I went to the trouble of writing ~5000 words on overdispersion so I could type "the mean is not the message", I admit nothing. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/ …pic.twitter.com/0pzV7h2ALa
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zeynep tufekci Retweeted Justin Ling
Described as dense but incredibly interesting=life goal

https://twitter.com/Justin_Ling/status/1311336869968445442 …zeynep tufekci added,
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zeynep tufekci Retweeted Robot Archie 🇪🇺 💙
Then again, the number of people who assume that I just "discovered" skewed distributions or the Pareto principle this month has been pretty impressive, too. Always makes me wonder if men get the article they just wrote explained back to them this much?
https://twitter.com/RobotArchie/status/1311456542047326214 …?zeynep tufekci added,
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zeynep tufekci Retweeted
This example is exactly why we should do more backward tracing for a superspreading pandemic. It means, mathematically, “who infected you” can be a more productive question then “who did you contact since becoming infected”—forward tracing. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/ … ht
@reillyhay https://twitter.com/kj_seung/status/1311443956656492548 …zeynep tufekci added,
This Tweet is unavailable.17 replies 237 retweets 696 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @zeynep
I liked that you had nuance in the discussion of hairdressers btw
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