Examples of balance and unbalance based on historic infection data (IMAGE)
Caption
Strategies of countries to fight SARS-CoV-2 differ widely and are reflected in case numbers. (A) Strategies that involve few non-pharmaceutical interventions rely on the population to hinder the spread in a self-regulated manner and are often accompanied by high case numbers. (B) Strategies that aim to keep case numbers low through extensive test-trace-isolate-strategies, combined with temporary lockdowns, can lead to medium case numbers. As the effectiveness of such strategies depends on daily infections, case numbers can seemingly explode when the (variable) testing capacity limit is exceeded. Many European countries managed to stabilize case numbers over summer 2020. However, with seasonality in autumn, and influx of new cases from abroad, the pandemic tipped over to instability, and they quickly saw case numbers rising faster than exponentially. (C) When the external influx is low or strategies used to reduce contacts are very effective, the stable regime can be reached. In this case, average case numbers are very low, and local outbreaks can be controlled well through local interventions. (Mind the different y-axes!) Raw data and preliminary visualizations were obtained from https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus.
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MPIDS / Priesemann
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