The Risk of Viral Infections

The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 brought world attention, first hand, to the rapid spread of a deadly virus. As an aid to understanding the dynamics of virus infections - and to show the importance of social separation, a simple model was produced using an Excel spreadsheet with VBA coding. In addition, a simple probability calculaiton is illustrated to show the value of social distancing.

• Population Infection Dynamics and Probabilities (pdf 740kb) - a short explanation of the SIR model (Excel VBA below) and the probability calculations showing the value of social distancing.
• Excel VBA spreadsheet (xlsm 46kb) model.
  
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• Ontario data used for parameter estimation (xlsx 21kb)
• References:
  • The Spread of Disease by J. Collins - a reference paper (pdf 3Mb).
  • Scientists do the math to show how large events like March Madness could spread coronavirus (1.2Mb) by Maureen Downey, https://www.ajc.com/blog/get-schooled/scientists-the-math-show-how-large-events-like-march-madness-could-spread-coronavirus/g1pVdzQgJS5aoPnadBqyXO/ (downloaded 2020.04.08).
  • [Weitz2020] Joshua Weitz, 2020: COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planner. figshare. Figure. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11965533.v1 (downloaded 2020.04.08).
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