The K number describes the variability in the number of people an infected person infects! So pathogens with low K numbers (like SARS-CoV-2) are spread by a SMALL number of infected people who pass the virus to a LARGE number of others. This is really important...threadhttps://twitter.com/Jennifertamu/status/1363043046284288000 …
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For the influenza which caused the 1918 pandemic, K is around 1. So 60% of people spread the virus. Sars, Mers and COVID-19 have K around 0.1 so only around 30% of people are responsible for most of the spread of the virus. Large outbreaks are caused by a few super-spreaders.
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This makes control trickier - isolating many people won’t make much difference if you miss a few super spreaders. One person can mess it up for everyone.
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It’s not entirely clear why this happens - some people may shed more virus because of their biology but it’s likely that particular events turn someone into a superspreader. Clusters of COVID-19 mainly happen in poorly ventilated, indoor environments...
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...especially where people are talking loudly or singing for prolonged periods.
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In pandemics with a low K backward tracing is extremely important.
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This is when we try to find not just the people that a case may have infected but we look for the person who infected each case. That person is likely to be a superspreader and so nice their found you can then go on to find all the others they infected.
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Of course this is only possible once transmission is really low. It takes time money and resources - when we have 1000s of new cases each day backward tracing just isn’t feasible.
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Here’s an absurdly good piece in the
@TheAtlantic by@zeynep -https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/ …10 replies 34 retweets 93 likesShow this thread
Thank you!
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