What about the 3% of New Yorkers floating around while infected but asymptomatic?
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In a prior post, we squeezed the NY antibody test results pretty hard and estimated that about 600,000 New Yorkers are walking around at any one time infected with the coronavirus but exhibiting no or very mild symptoms. That means that about 3% of NY’s population are asymptomatic “hidden carriers” who may be unknowingly spreading the disease.
To understand their significance …
Most infectious disease epidemiology models are built on the “SEIR” construct: how many people are susceptible to a virus … of them, how many are likely to get exposed to it … of them, how many are likely become infected … and of them, how many are likely to recover, perhaps with some degree of immunity. The modelers then calibrate a virus’s behavior, estimating how long it takes people to move from susceptible to exposed to infected to final resolution (recovery or death).
My former strategy students should recognize the SEIR construct as a basic hierarchy-of-effects model, similar in design to, say, the classic marketing awareness – trial – repurchase model.
And, the spread effects are a classic Bass Diffusion Model application with infected people playing the role of “innovators” and susceptible people playing the role of “imitators”.
Let’s dive a little deeper…
The Homa Files 