A simple arithmetic rationale for crushing the epidemic curve of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) instead of flattening it

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Abstract

Countries with ambitious strategies to crush the curve of their epidemic trajectories, to promptly eliminate SARS-CoV-2 transmission at national level, include China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia. In stark contrast, many of the European countries hit hardest over the last two months, including Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and the United Kingdom, currently appear content to merely flatten the curve of their epidemic trajectories so that transmission persists at rates their critical care services can cope with. Here is presented a simple set of arithmetic modelling analyses that explain why preferable crush the curve strategies , to eliminate transmission within months, would require only a modest amount of additional containment effort when compared to flatten the curve strategies that allow epidemics to persist at a steady, supposedly manageable level for years, decades or even indefinitely.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.06.20093112: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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