Quote:

R0

R0 is an estimate of the contagiousness that is a function of human behavior and the biological character of pathogens. R0 is not a measure of the severity of an infectious disease or the rapidity of a pathogen's spread through a population. It is not a biological constant for a specific pathogen.1 It is estimated when there is zero immunity in the population. R0 is a derivative of the following variables—the duration of infectivity after the patient gets infected, the likelihood of transmission of infection per contact between a susceptible person and an infectious individual, and the contact rate. The infectivity of the pathogen and duration of contagiousness are biological constants, but the extent of human-to-human interaction will vary and hence R0 will vary depending on this parameter. This explains the importance of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also to be noted that the R0 value of COVID-19 is higher than that of SARS and MERS.

Re

Re (effective reproduction number) which also known as Rt, is the number of people in a population who can be infected by an individual at any specific time. While measuring the transmissibility of the virus at any given time during an epidemic we use Re. It changes as the population becomes increasingly immunized, either by individual immunity following infection or vaccination and also as people die.

Factors affecting Re include the number of people with infection, the number of susceptible people with whom infected people are in contact, and people's behavior such as social distancing.

Quote:

Vaccination campaigns reduce the proportion of a population at risk for infection and have proven to be highly effective in mitigating future outbreaks (26). This conclusion is sometimes used to suggest that an aim of vaccination campaigns is to remove susceptible members of the population to reduce the R0 for the event to <1. Although the removal of susceptible members from the population will affect infection transmission by reducing the number of effective contacts between infectious and susceptible persons, this activity will technically not reduce the R0 value because the definition of R0 includes the assumption of a completely susceptible population. When examining the effect of vaccination, the more appropriate metric to use is the effective reproduction number (R), which is similar to R0 but does not assume complete susceptibility of the population and, therefore, can be estimated with populations having immune members (16,20,27). Efforts aimed at reducing the number of susceptible persons within a population through vaccination would result in a reduction of the R value, rather than R0 value.

silversand wrote:


With an exceptionally high number like that, I expect almost every living human on Earth regardless of vaccination status will contract Omicron in very short order (maybe by mid February?), including fully-boosted "us"; even using our NIOSH US-manufactured N95 masks, every time we enter an enclosed public (or, private) space not our own condo.

Anyone?

Deb and Ed M wrote:



As I watch the number of new cases rise like a rocket, the infection rate at 33+% - I figure it's just a matter of time before it gets us, shots, masks and Social distancing and all. Florida's New Daily Case Rate is almost 300 per 100k population; and I know in my heart that number is really low, because the testing lines are so long that people aren't getting tested/reported. They are just hunkering down at home.....

BC Snob wrote:

This is effective reproduction number, Rt (or Re), as defined the the links I provided earlier (see quote below) not R0.

way2roll wrote:

Humans have done a great job to mitigate this as best we can, but mother nature is a beast.

way2roll wrote:

and equal opportunity to the vaccinated and non vaccinated alike - .