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The importance of
It is said that the infection rate control is the key factor to prevent medical collapse.
There is a lot of talk about "social distance" and abstaining from going out for non-essential activities, but what are the effects of this?
Premise for the simulation
The article calls this fake disease "simulitis" and has simulated the infection speed under several circumstances.
As a premise, "simulitis" has the following characteristics.
It spreads even more easily than covid-19: whenever a healthy person (in light blue) comes into contact with a sick person (in orange), the healthy person becomes sick, too.
A recovered person can neither transmit "simulitis" to a healthy person nor become sick again after coming in contact with a sick person.
Simulation #1
What will happen when "simulitis" becomes an outbreak in a town of 200 people?
The people in town are placed at a random position, moving at a random angle, and we will start with one person who is sick.
(There is a simulation video in the article which is much more easier to understand)
We can see that the red curve which indicates the number of infected people rises sharply over time and then gradually falls as people recover.
Simulation #2
Next, we will look at the case when we create a forced quarantine.
As it turned out in our world, a complete lock down is impossible and it is highly complex to completely isolate the sick ones from healthy ones.
Simulation #3
This is where the "social distancing" comes in.
What if 3/4 of the population adopts the strategy to quarantine themselves while 1/4 continues to move around?
As a result, we can see that an increasing number of people have been able to finish the simulation healthy without ever coming into contact with an infected person.
Simulation #4
To further deepen the simulation of social distancing, here is the case where the number of moving people decreased to 1/8 of the population.
We can see that the number of infections have decreased even more, and the percentage of the healthy people are higher than Simulation #3.
Conclusion
All four of the simulations are at random and you can see that each time you play the video in the article you will get a different result.
Though the detailed number outcomes are different, we have learned that social distancing works best of all even compared to the attempted quarantine.
It is clear at a glance as above when you compare the simulation results.
Although this simulation is only about this fake disease "simulitis", these results should have helped to image a little more concretely on how our random actions could have an influence on someone else - just like the random moving dots.
The one and major difference is that "simulitis" cures after a certain period of time, while COVID-19 can kill. And, it is the elderly members of our community who are most at risk of dying from COVID-19.
Based on the results of this simulation, you may want to think again about whether the errand you are about to go out for is really necessary right now.
（proofreading必要）
Comparison of infection simulations
Here, we would like to introduce this simulation posted on The Washington Post as it was explained very simply.
(Source: Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to 'flatten the curve'")
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