DJ My idea of Exponential Pandemic Model (EPM) is based on two other ideas; -Exponential Climate Change, now main motor did become methane release most from the Arctic -The Fire-triangle, fuel-oxygen-temperature as basic ingrediënts In the Exponential Pandemic Model you also need three (main) factors; -Disease -Hosts -Transport Diseases are believed to be increasing due to climate change, unbalancing of ecosphere...Animals losing habitat, feeding ground and unable to catch up with the speed of change become more vulnerable. Hosts give room for virus, bacteria etc. to spread. Human population getting close to 8 billion increases risks for humans. Transport is getting the disease to the host... What is causing pandemics is an unbalance in one or more of these three factors... In the present pandemic ; Massive (air)transport did bring both humans-and other species-to places in numbers unseen in history. Not only catching disease-CoViD-19-but also further spreading it into a number of hosts unseen in history. In a "normal/balanced" scenario Diseases/Hosts/Transport keep eachother in balance; D/H/T=1 In an exponential model all three "go wild".... -Diseases mutate so they can spread more easy into more hosts -So hosts in the present pandemic will soon be most non-human hosts -Transport over long distance did start this pandemic, but the disease does no longer need long distance transport...it can spread nearby.. D/H/T=endless...allmost. Diseases; some claims there would be a limit to variants...unclear why ? Mutation/recombination may end the old-"starter"-virus but it is replaced by that many new ones the pandemic only gets worse. Hosts; no longer just humans...but number of mammals and birds that may catch a corona virus disease is in the trillions. Transport; did go from Wuhan (most likely to start with) to around the globe, but once it did get that widespread variants only may need meters to go to a next host... What can be the goal of an Exponential Pandemic Model ? Seeking steps for interventions. Transport; STOP THE SPREAD may run out of possibilities, time is the other factor...once the disease did manage to "get everywhere" intervention for transport has to be in shielding, isolation, masks etc. Mass vaccination-also on a level unseen in history-is supposed to offer protection. Did a good job in protecting against severe disease for the few that did get vaccinated in time...The disease is not-yet-in every corner of the Earth...so some people did not meet the disease... Non-human hosts did see "the mink problem-spread" ending up killing all the farm-minks in DK, NL...but there is a limit to what we can do in wildlife...bats do have lots of corona virusses...CoViD virus spread a.o. to US/Canada deer. (How ill do they get from it ? Problem is CoViD-virus spread in deer and-likely-from deer into yet other species). So where are we now ? Since Omicron exploded millions of new-tested-cases per day...."hopium" the disease will get milder...not even stopping most airtravel transporting variants around the globe. Resulting in lots of more new variants, recombinations... What is needed-sorry to say very unlikely to happen-is an international plan to stop this pandemic using ALL the tools we have ! On an optimistic note; I still believe we can end/limit this pandemic this year if we did make a decission to do so ! But the longer we wait the harder it gets...
------------- We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. ~Albert Einstein
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