From NATURE Magazine News Feature: July 2020
“Epidemiologists are quite keen on downplaying R, but the politicians seem to have embraced it with enthusiasm,” says Mark Woolhouse, an infectious-diseases expert at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom.
“Fascination might have turned into unhealthy political and media fixation, say disease experts.”
In this pandemic, R has leapt from the pages of academic journals into regular discussions by politicians and newspapers, framed as a number that will shape everyone’s lives. As Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, explained in a widely viewed video, an R above one means an outbreak is growing, and below one means that it is shrinking.
In many countries, it is publicly reported every week. In June, epidemiologists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, announced a website where anyone can look up the value for any country — and for many smaller regions — in the world.
READ FULL ARTICLE
________________________