Epidemics and Exponential Growth

Some of the most important information about the Coronavirus (Covid-19) epidemic is to be found not from medical knowledge or in the lab but from basic mathematics. The key to understanding this behaviour is in the mathematics of exponential growth. What does this mean? There are two ways in which regular increases of anything can occur – either by constant addition – arithmetic growth – or by constant multiplication – exponential growth. We can illustrate the difference by starting from 1. If there is daily arithmetic growth of 2, then on the second day the total will be 1 + 2, so 3, on the third day the total will be 1 + 2 + 2, so 5, on the fourth day 1 + 2 + 2 + 2, so 7, and so on. If there is daily exponential growth of 2, then on the second day the total will be 1 × 2, so 2, on the third day 1 × 2 × 2, so 4, on the fourth day 1 × 2 × 2 × 2, so 8, and so on. The difference is in the sign – a plus sign in the case of arithmetic growth, a multiplication sign in the case of exponential growth. As is made clear by Chart 1 below, although the arithmetic growth gives higher totals initially, exponential growth very quickly afterwards leads to higher and rapidly increasing values.

Epidemics cause exponentially increasing numbers of cases because for every person who is infected, that person can in turn infect another. The number of people each infected person in turn infects every day multiplies the number of cases. If we start off with one person who then infects one other over 24 hours, and these two each infect another over the following 24 hours, and all four infected each in turn infect one other the next day, and so on, then we have the daily exponential growth of 2 we described above. This might be quite an extreme epidemic, but in any case where the number of new infections is increasing each day, the growth will be exponential, rather than arithmetic.

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