Question

In relation to the coronavirus:

. How would the results differ if you have only a 20% or 50% chance of contracting the disease after being exposed? How does this relate to the concept of susceptibility?

3. How would the results differ if the infected person dies very quickly or very slowly after contracting the disease? Which disease will be more evolutionarily successful -- one that kills quickly or one that kills slowly? Why? If you try to "think like a disease" what is your primary objective if you want to be successful? What is the purpose of the host? Explain.

4. If we expanded this simulation to 6 months, but infected people either die or get better after 2 days, based on a heads/tails coin flip, how much harder might it be to track the course of the epidemic?

Answer 1

The concept of susceptibility to any disease refers to the chance of getting the disease by the the infectious organism from a diseased person to a healthy person. If covid-19 is occurring in only 20 to 50% of the persons that are coming across the already infected persons, then the results of the tests will differ 50 - 80 % from the normal results.

3. If a person dies with covid-19 at too early days after being infected, then the antibody titer will be very high at the early stage of infection itself. If the person dies with covid-19 infection at very later period after being infected, then the antibody titers will be very low and the test results will be showing mild positive for covid 19 test.

"Think like disease" explains that the person is having disease but the level of infection is low, with which the person is exhibiting very less to no symptoms.

4. In the scientific world, racking of any infection or disease can be done only by conducting tests or experiments but it cannot be done by making heads and tails. And if tracking has to be done by really heads and tails, it will become apparently very hard to do so.