Day Fourteen of Orca in Switzerland – Simulating An Epidemic

Reading Time: 3 minutes
This morning I watched the Simulating an epidemic and it's interesting. The person is not an expert. He played with various models to show how epidemics spread over a period of time when variables such as infectiousness, social distancing, quarantining and other variables are implemented.

If one hundred percent of people self-isolate then the duration of an epidemic is cut short from lack of people to infect. This is what every nation should have done. With such measures the duration of an epidemic or pandemic is short and thus the economy takes a much smaller hit.

I chose both to watch and share this video because it's factual, it's experimental and it provides us with examples of how actions have positive or negative effects. Despite it being theoretical it provides the right messages.

When I saw the video titled "How to tell if we're beating COVID-19" I did not follow the link despite having it suggested on YouTube and Twitter. When I read the title my immediate reaction is that at the moment we're not. To beat it we should have gone into isolation as soon as there was a risk of a pandemic, not after it has infiltrated numerous communities and spread.

I look at the graphs on Corona-data.ch every day. During the first few days of ORCA I was hoping that Switzerland's graph would decline downwards within a week of people going into self-isolation but that didn't happen.

From the moment people were told to self-isolate to the moment they did self-isolate there was a lag. It took almost two weeks for the streets to empty and for motorways to become empty. Two nights I looked towards the motorway and I couldn't see any cars for thirty or more seconds. The "Red and White Snake" as I like to call motorway traffic at night, vanished.

When you look at the model showing one hundred percent isolation in the video above you see that pandemics can be cut short much sooner. It helps justify the attitude that I've had when on my walks, of avoiding to be within two meters of others and to turn around and find an alternate route if I could not avoid coming in close proximity to others.

I have been reading The Aeronauts A few weeks ago Amazon Prime was recommending the film, but after watching the first few seconds I saw that it was based on a book and decided to read the book instead. It explores the use of Hot Air balloons to study weather and the atmosphere, before planes and other forms of transport. It also explores the early days of scientific expeditions that attempted to get to the top of the Mont Blanc to study atmospherics.