The Flaw of Averages in Flattening Contagion

Slowing the rate of contagion of an epidemic, or flattening the curve is economically costly by
keeping people at home. However if it prevents limited critical care capacity from becoming
swamped, it may save thousands of lives.This model supports my blog on this topic.

This model was inspired by

How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives, in one chart in VOX
by Eliza Barclay and Dylan Scott.
costly by
oming
About the Modeler
Dr. Sam L. Savage is Executive Director of ProbabilityManagement.org, a
501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to making uncertainty actionable. The
organization has received funding from Chevron, Kaiser Permanente,
Lockheed Martin, Loring Ward, General Electric, PG&E, Wells Fargo and
others, and Harry Markowitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, was a founding
board member. Dr. Savage is author of The Flaw of Averages: Why We
Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty (John Wiley & Sons, 2009,
2012). He is an Adjunct Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at
Stanford University and a Fellow of Cambridge University's Judge Business
School. He is the inventor of the Stochastic Information Packet (SIP), an
auditable data array for conveying uncertainty. Dr. Savage received his
Ph.D. in computational complexity from Yale University.

After building the model someone I sent it to pointed me to

A War Footing: Surfing the Curve by Economist Joshua
Gans, which I highly recommend as well.
 Start in numeric mode Adjust critical care capacity a
relative fatality rates here.
Experiment with
Flattening the
Contagion here, and
observe the
expected fatalities as
a % of infected
population above.

Click the SIPmath box to simulate uncertain contagion rate

The indicated results

reflect 1,000 Monte
Carlo trials per
keystroke using the
Excel Data Table
command.
 Adjust degree of uncertainty
and view specific trials here.
Adjust critical care capacity and
relative fatality rates here.

Individual trials appear on graph

dicated results
t 1,000 Monte
trials per
oke using the
Data Table
mand.
 Expected Fatalities as % of Infected Population (EFPP) Click to Simulate
Unflattened Flattened Simulated SIPmath
14.2% 2.6% #N/A

Chance of EFPP > 5.0% = 0%

Distribution of Fatalities

Critical Care Chance of Fatality

7 Capacity 70,000 With Critical Care Without Critical Care
1% 50%

More Degree of Degree of

Flattening Uncertainty Trial (1-1,000)
4 4 1
Less

Created with the Free SIPmath™ Tools from

ProbabilityManagement.org

© Copyright 2020, Sam L. Savage

 200,000

180,000 Average
Flattened
160,000 Simulate
d
140,000 Capacity

120,000

100,000 1

80,000

60,000

40,000

20,000

-
1 5 9 13 17 21 25 29 33 37 41 45 49 53 57 61 65 69 73
Days since first case ==>
SOURCE: CDC
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