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    Demystifying the Math of the Coronavirus
    31 May 2020Working Paper Summaries

    Demystifying the Math of the Coronavirus

    by Elon Kohlberg and Abraham Neyman
    This paper provides a conceptual model for the progression of COVID-19 that is somewhat imprecise but that’s very simple and easy to understand. By relying on this description, one can obtain a rough estimate of the impact of various social distancing measures on the rate of growth of new infections.
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    Author Abstract

    We provide an elementary mathematical description of the spread of the coronavirus. We explain two fundamental relationships: How the rate of growth in new infections is determined by the “effective reproductive number”; and how the effective reproductive number is affected by social distancing. By making a key approximation, we are able to formulate these relationships very simply and thereby avoid complicated mathematics. The same approximation leads to an elementary method for estimating the effective reproductive number.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: April 2020
    • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #20-112
    • Faculty Unit(s): Strategy
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    Elon Kohlberg
    Elon Kohlberg
    Royal Little Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus
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