Magical Epidemic Thinking

Success simulation during Ukraine's COVID-19 disaster

Information from Ukraine’s Health Ministry about COVID-19 infections in conjunction with a neural network to determine the efficacy of quarantine measures is being used to create models to help predict when it will be safe to rub noses again.

Ukraine today looks less like Italy and Spain, according to Chief Sanitary Doctor Viktor Liashko, who says the virus is spreading more like in Poland or Sweden, depending, with a two-week lag.

“[If we had not imposed a quarantine,] we could have had 180,000 COVID-19 patients, but now we have only about 10,000. There has been no rapid spread of the virus here. We have reached a quiet plateau, where we are recording new cases. Taking into account those who have recovered and died, cases are not increasing more than 10% daily. We are moving towards an optimistic forecast of the development of the epidemic in Ukraine, one where the increase in the number of patients does not exceed 30% daily. Under this scenario, our healthcare system will be able…