Mitigation and herd immunity strategy for COVID-19 is likely to fail

Wolfgang Bock; Barbara Adamik; Marek Bawiec; Viktor Bezborodov; Marcin Bodych; Jan Pablo Burgard; Thomas Goetz; Tyll Krueger; Agata Migalska; Barbara Pabjan; Tomasz Ozanski; Ewaryst Rafajlowicz; Wojciech Rafajlowicz,; Ewa Skubalska-Rafajlowicz; Sara Ryfczynska; Ewa Szczurek; Piotr Szymanski

the suspected R* could be seen to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3.883. To validate this, we then look at the different runs and compare it with the observed values in a semilog plot as is usual for exponential growth functions. This plot is given for Berlin in Figure A.7 . Each blue line represents one simulation run. The simulation started with 5 infected persons. As can be seen, as usual in stochastic microsimulations, it takes some time till the dynamic of the simulation stabilizes, which is definitely already the case when 13 infected persons are reached in the average of runs. This point is indicated as the 5th March where this number of infected individuals was observed in Berlin. As can be seen from the graph, the red line indicating the observed values lies in the center of the simulation path. So we are confident that this R*=3.883 is a good approximation to the actual R* in Berlin. Similarly, the R* are gathered for Poland R*=3.159 (5th of March until 21th of March) and Germany R*=3,041. Note that the epidemic in Wroc law is still in such an early stage that the case numbers do not yet allow a reliable estimation. We thus assume for now that the R* for Wroc law coincides with the estimated R* for Poland.