Thursday, August 12, 2021

Trust the Experts

 8/11/21 NPR:

"For the delta variant, the R0 is now calculated at between six and seven," Wenseleers says. So it's two- to three-times as contagious as the original version of SARS-CoV-2 (R0 = 2 to 3) but less contagious than the chickenpox (R0 = 9 to 10).
So why did the CDC say the delta variant was "just as transmissible as" the chickenpox?
For one, the leaked document underestimated the R0 for chickenpox and overestimated the R0 for the delta variant. "The R0 values for delta were preliminary and calculated from data taken from a rather small sample size," a federal official told NPR. The value for the chickenpox (and other R0s in the slideshow) came from a graphic from The New York Times, which wasn't completely accurate.

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