[Donger]

Originally Posted by cdcox

This is not correct. You can still have new cases when the R0 is below 1, but the number of new cases will decrease over time.

Let's say R0 is 0.8 and there are 100 people who have the disease. For simplicity we'll also assume that germination time for the disease is a week.


100 people will pass it to 80 the following week.
The 80 people will pass it to 64 the following week.
The 64 will pass it to 51 the following week and so on until there are no new cases several weeks down the road.

In comparison if R0 is 1.2 then

100 people will pass it to 120 the following week.
120 people will pass it to 144 the following week.
144 people will pass it to 173 the following week and so on. The number of new cases will grow without bounds until you start running out of people to infect.

I stand corrected. Thank you.