Connecting Viral Pandemics to Ecological Population Growth Models
Author(s): Parks Collins1, Paul Strode2
1. Mitchell Community College 2. Howard Hughes Medical Institute
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Connecting Viral Pandemics to Ecological Population Growth Models.pdfDescription
The 2020 zoonotic outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the resulting COVID-19 global disease pandemic has been sobering and devastating. The disease spread quietly at first before roaring into nearly every global community. Epidemiologists and medical experts raced to understand the behavior of the disease and the physiological toll it could take on those infected. One critical disease variable that the experts immediately tried to track is R0 (pronounced r-naught). R0 is the basic reproduction rate for a disease and is the potential number of secondary cases one case could produce at the beginning of an outbreak in a completely susceptible (healthy, but not immune) population. In this activity students use the HHMI Population Growth Models interactive to explore R0 for diseases and discuss the importance of connecting population ecology to current events like the COVID-19 global pandemic.
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Researchers should cite this work as follows:
- Collins, P., Strode, P. (2020). Connecting Viral Pandemics to Ecological Population Growth Models. HHMI BioInteractive, QUBES Educational Resources. doi:10.25334/KKGC-W370