Some fractal thoughts about the COVID-19 infection outbreak

• Main Author: Massimo Materassi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2019-12-01
• Series: Chaos, Solitons & Fractals: X
• Subjects: COVID-19 outbreak; Generalized Richards Model; Herd behaviour; Population dynamics; Fractal dimension
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590054420300130

Some ideas are presented about a geometric motivation of the apparent capacity of generalized logistic equations to describe the outbreak of quite many epidemics, possibly including that of the COVID-19 infection. This interpretation pivots on the complex, possibly fractal, structure of the locus describing the “contagion event set”, and on what can be learnt from the models of trophic webs with “herd behaviour”.Under the hypothesis that the total number of cases, as a function of time, is fitted by a solution of the Generalized Richards Model, it is argued that the exponents appearing in that differential equation, usually determined empirically, represent the geometric signature of the non-space filling, network-like locus on which contagious contacts take place.