With all of Scott Morrison’s rambling press conferences about what’s being done to contain the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic that’s hitting Australia, it feels like there’s a lot of mixed messaging on what the government is doing to get this disease under control.
But according to data from a complex model on how coronavirus COVID-19 spreads that’s been developed by researchers in Australia, the key to bringing the disease under control surprisingly lies in our hands.
Speaking of being in coronavirus self-isolation, the GOAT team talk about how to make the most of your quarantine on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
According to ABC News, researchers at the University Of Sydney have built a very complex simulation of the Australian population and then added the coronavirus COVID-19 to it to see how it spreads.
After testing various scenarios, the researchers arrived at a surprising conclusion: Bringing coronavirus COVID-19 under control in Australia – or to “flatten the curve” as some would say – could be accomplished over the course of several weeks (around 13) if at least eight out of 10 people just stay at home and follow all the responsible social distancing rules.
Hell, if we can get that number up to nine out of 10 people, the model suggests that we’ll almost get rid of the disease entirely out of the country. Interestingly, the model found that closing schools didn’t have a major impact on the number of people infected but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
However, this fight to “flatten the curve” will be all for naught if the number of Australians in self-isolation slips as little as seven out of 10 people. In other words, we have more power in this fight against the coronavirus than initially thought and it requires us to be responsible over the next few months.
However, it seems like a lot of Australians are either not too clear on how to properly adhere to social distancing rules, are doing it incorrectly, or are just being arseholes to the rest of the population so here’s just a refresher on what you need to do to minimise the risk of spreading coronavirus COVID-19 around:
- Stay at home unless absolutely necessary, like shopping or work
- Don’t hold any social gatherings and only very small get togethers are advised
- Keep at least 1.5 metres apart from other people
Now keep in mind that this model isn’t definitive and makes a number of big assumptions, such as assuming infected individuals taking physical and social distancing seriously and all confirmed coronavirus COVID-19 cases in Australia were isolated since the start of the outbreak.
At most, the model is a good look into what we can do to help beat this coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. At the very least, this model is a strong argument for why people need to practice responsible social distancing as much as possible in order to minimise the risk of the disease spreading.
So in short, just stay at home for a few weeks in order to “flatten the curve,” and Australia will be able to contain the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and bring it under our control hopefully long enough for a vaccine to be developed.
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