How does the SIR model for disease spread work, and how can it be altered to explain airborne transmission?
In: Mathematics
SIR is an acronym that stands for “Susceptible, Infected, Removed”. Initially, the entire population is susceptible (except for patient 0, who is infected). Overtime, number of infected increases exponentially. However, when infected increase, the susceptible population decrease.
Eventually, the new cases start to slow down as infected population. When a person has been infected for some amount of time, they become part of the “removed” population. Some of the people in this group are dead, while most have gained immunity and cannot get the disease again. As for airborne transmission, the model itself does not need to be altered.
[Here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg) is a good video about the SIR model.
SIR is a simple model that divides the population into people who can be infected (Susceptible), people who are currently Infectious, and people who have Recovered and are no longer vulnerable to disease.
The SIR model makes no assumptions about how disease is transmitted and doesn’t need to be altered to account for (not explain – models don’t explain anything, they are an attempt to correspond to reality) airborne transmission. The ease of transmission is bundled into a model parameter.
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