We want to model infectious diseases. These diseases can spread from one member of a population to another; we try to gain insights into how quickly they spread, what proportion of a population they infect, what proportion dies, etc. One of the easiest ways to model them (and the way we’re focusing on here) is with a compartmental model. A compartmental model separates the population into several compartments, for example:
This project is focused on fitting an extended SIR model with time-dependent $R_0$-values and resource-dependent death rates to real Coronavirus data, in order to come as close as possible to the real numbers and make informed predictions about possible future developments. But before we jump right into fitting the data to our model, let’s do something that is often overlooked — let’s have a short look at what our model cannot do.
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician born in 1818 and active at the Vienna General Hospital during the 1840s. In 1847, the Ignaz Semmelweis made a breakthrough discovery: he discovered handwashing. Contaminated hands were a major cause of childbed fever and were often fatal by enforcing handwashing at his hospital he saved hundreds of lives. Childbed fever was a deadly disease affecting women that just have given birth. In Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, doctors’ wards had three times the mortality of midwives’ wards.