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PANDEMIC ALERT LEVEL
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Computer Model Projections

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bruss01 View Drop Down
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Joined: January 12 2006
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    Posted: January 17 2006 at 3:09pm

Has anyone run across any computer simulations of an epidemic spread?

Just for fun and idle curiosity, I put together a crude computer model to see how fast an infection would spread.  I used the following assumptions (I've got no idea how valid these assumptions may be):

A person, after being exposed, would be non-contagious for 2 days.

Starting on the 3rd day, they would, in the course of their daily lives, infect 3 people per day.

After the 5th day the person would be ill enough that they would be confined in bed at home or in a hospital, and wouldn't infect any more people. Or they would recover completely and be non-contagious.

Using these assumptions, and beginning with a single "Patient 0", in just 22 days there were about 15 million cases.  I had to call off the test at that point due to the enormous amounts of data being generated, threatening to eat my disk and overwhelm the system memory.

I'm sure others have better, more sophisticated models, and probably a more valid set of assumptions (and hopefully more disk space!), but this little exercise was certainly an eye-opener about just how fast a contagious illness can spread.



Edited by bruss01
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 17 2006 at 3:26pm

Bruss,

Funny you posted this...I was just reading this: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/birdflu.html?pg=1&a mp;topic=birdflu&topic_set=

page three & four relate specifically to Avian Influenza breaking out.  I have skimmed a few of the "official" models and they seem ridiculous to this non-scientist.  They have 30 days to contain an outbreak; yeah, right.  They can blanket an area with Tamiflu and contain and outbreak; sure.  I don't buy it unless we are talking about some backwater locale in China with no airport access and no roads in or out.  I think Wired's article brings out a much more realistic picture....we're pretty much screwed, pretty darned quickly.

BTW: I think your exponential growth might be on the high side.  RO of a perceived deadly disease might be closer to 1.5 - 2.5 (a gal can hope anyway.)

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote bruss01 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 17 2006 at 4:01pm
Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?  I was wondering if anyone had a better set of assumptions that might be worth running thru the system?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 17 2006 at 4:09pm

Question....is your area of breakout going to be rural or urban?  I think this makes a good bit of difference, especially in the first two weeks.

D.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 17 2006 at 4:25pm
Bruss...check out the MIDAS study.  This is what the experts hang their "pipe dreams" on.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote bruss01 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 17 2006 at 4:43pm

So apparently, the advanced computer modelling geeks at Los Alamos (birthplace of the A-bomb) came up with the following forecast provided by their supercomputers:

"EpiCast reveals that, in contrast with flu epidemics of decades past, an outbreak today won't progress "like a wave across the country," spreading from town to town and state to state. Instead, no matter where it erupts - Seattle, Chicago, Miami - it will swiftly blanket the nation. "It starts in Chicago one day," Germann says, "and a couple of weeks later it's everywhere at once." Thank the airlines. Even though disease has piggybacked on air travel for decades, we generally had only isolated outbreaks of low-transmission viruses - like when SARS leapt from Hong Kong to Canada in 2003 but failed to spread beyond Toronto. In an epidemic of a highly communicable disease, the airlines' hub network would effectively seed every metropolitan area in the country within a month or two - and then reseed them, repeatedly.

November, the Department of Health and Human Services released its pandemic influenza plan. The report offers a thorough and frank assessment of the havoc a full-fledged pandemic would wreak. The nation, the report says, "will be severely taxed, if not overwhelmed." Disease will break out repeatedly, for as long as a year. Hospitals will run out of beds and vaccines. Doctors and nurses will be overworked to the point of exhaustion. Mass fatalities will overwhelm mortuaries and morgues with bodies. Before it has exhausted itself, the report estimates, the disease could spread to as many as 90 million Americans, hospitalizing 10 million and killing almost 2 million."

EDIT BY MOD: FORGOT TO POST CREDIT http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/birdflu.html?pg=1&a mp;topic=birdflu&topic_set=



Edited by SophiaZoe
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 17 2006 at 4:56pm

"....AND A COUPLE OF WEEKS LATER...."

Now where I come from that means two weeks maybe three if we are lucky.  Not the 3 - 6 months so many experts like to say.  This was a bet of an eye-opener for me...to see my thoughts expressed in black and white by people who know what the heck that are talking about (unlike someone we all know and love).

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