Fractal kinetics of COVID-19 pandemic

Anna L. Ziff; Robert M. Ziff

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.16.20023820 doi: medRxiv preprint occasional long-range connections (such as caused by people traveling on trains, boats and planes). The results imply that this network has an effective minimum path fractal dimension of 2.25. The implication is that the disease produces flares in which the growth is momentarily exponential, but then slows down until another flare-up. The averaged effect of this growth apparently yields a power-law. suggest that if the pandemic spreads into new cities, exponential growth like what happened in Wuhan in the early stages would occur. Hopefully, if this were the case, it would be quickly stopped and slower behavior would ensue. But our prediction of approximately 13,350 deaths by March 27 relies on the assumption that a new major outbreak will not happen. Hermanowicz [2020] and Roosa et al. [2020] have recently modeled the disease using a logistical and other growth models. These models are able to predict the ultimate number of cases, and find results in the range of 20,000 to 60,000. We believe the numbers will be much greater, and expect a number of deaths in this range, if the fractal growth continues as it has for a few more months.