TOP 3 REASONS THE CORONAVIRUS IS SPREADING SO FAST IN THE UNITED STATES VERSUS CHINA AND SOUTH KOREA

In this video, I discuss how contagious the Coronavirus SARS Cov2 virus is, and why it is spreading so fast in the United States and other western countries like Spain, Italy, and France. I talk about cultural differences between these countries and eastern countries like China, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan and what these differences have to do with the rate of the outbreak. Finally, I discuss the differences between our Federalist, decentralized government and how it compares to the Unitarian, centralized governments of eastern countries like China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam and how that might impact the speed of the virus.

When discussing the speed of transmission of the virus, we unpack the R0 (R naught value) of the Coronavirus SARS Cov2 virus and how quickly it spreads.

Let me start out by explaining what R Naught means. It is a scientific term that describes how fast an infectious disease could spread. It assumes that all people are susceptible to the virus with no immunity and have received no vaccine. It also assumes the original case doesn’t know they are contagious, so there is no social distancing or quarantine measures taken into account. The bigger the RO, the harder it is to control the epidemic.

For the sake of comparison, let’s use the 2009 H1N1 virus as an example. This strain of influenza has an R0 value of 1.5, which is slightly higher than a seasonal flu. Our original case is Flash, our mascot here at noisehound. On day 1, he becomes contagious and does not change his normal behavior. On day 2, he infects 1.5 of his friends and family. On day 3, those 1.5 hounds infect 2.25 additional friends and family. If we continue on to day 10, on the 10th day, an additional 38 hounds are infected. When we combine those with the infections from days 2 through 9, we get a total of 112 pups that Flash has infected. Bad dog!

Now let’s look at this current coronavirus. Scientists are currently estimating the R0 value to be somewhere between 2.7 and 4. We’ll use an R0 value of 3. As in our previous example, Flash becomes contagious on day 1 and doesn’t change his normal behavior. On day 2, Flash infects 3 of his family and friends. On day 3, those 3 hounds infect 9 others. And so on until day 10, where an astounding 19,683 hounds are infected on that day. When we add this to all of the infections from days 2 through 9, Flash has infected a total of 29,523 pups.