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Simulator

A calculator to estimate the number of potential COVID-19 cases in a community. For informational purposes only.
AC
Al Chen

Background: Estimating true cases in a community

The inspiration for this simulator came from
Tomas Pueyo's excellent Medium article
⁠
and
Sal Khan's great video recap
⁠
of one of the key points: That it can be very tricky to estimate the true cases in a community, but you can work backwards from the number of deaths reported today. Try the simulation below, or unfold these writeups for a quick synopsis.

⁠
Tomas Pueyo's article
⁠
excerpt

Tomas observed that the observed cases on Hubei were significantly less than the actual cases being reported. This is the relevant chart:
⁠
image.png
⁠
⁠

⁠
Sal Khan's video
⁠
recap

⁠
⁠
⁠

Set parameters for the simulation:

Infection to death:
00
14
⁠
days
Mortality rate:
0
1
⁠
% implies
100
⁠
original cases per death today
Doubling rate:
00
3
⁠
days implies
23.1
⁠
% daily growth
Deaths observed on day N:
000
1
⁠
implies there are
1,491
⁠
cases today
Chart of Simulated data
1
⁠

Simulated data table
1
Date
Day #
# of currentCases
Bar
1
7/24
-13
100
2
7/25
-12
123
3
7/26
-11
152
4
7/27
-10
187
5
7/28
-9
230
6
7/29
-8
283
7
7/30
-7
348
8
7/31
-6
428
9
8/1
-5
527
10
8/2
-4
649
11
8/3
-3
799
12
8/4
-2
984
13
8/5
-1
1,211
14
8/6
0
1,491
15
8/7
1
1,835
16
8/8
2
2,259
17
8/9
3
2,781
18
8/10
4
3,423
19
8/11
5
4,214
20
8/12
6
5,187
21
8/13
7
6,385
There are no rows in this table
⁠

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