Is this right?- population density

[Orangeblossom78]

So I am arguing with a sibling who lives in Scotland about this. I live in the south of England in a city where virus cases are low.

My elderly father lives in sheltered accommodation in central Scotland not in a city though. My sibling had been telling my dad there are no cases locally and he didn't need to worry himself about the virus.

I told my sibling there are three times the cases per heard of population in dad's area and it was wrong to falsely reassure him and spoke to dad myself. especially as sheltered accommodation has shared areas and there are cases in nearly half of Scottish care homes too.

Anyway, my sibling says that even though the figures are far higher because there is high pollution density where I am it was 'far, far less likely' for dad to catch the virus!

Is he right or not? I understand what he means bit it seems to me now the regions are being hit harder than some cities.

bump?

My first thoughts are that from a limited perspective, he is correct (population density may, in principle, affect R0) and so are you (sheltered accommodation would have a different dynamic like care homes so would affect R0). R0 is an average informed by a range of different localities and behaviours.

As you say, population in parts of London is much higher but now looks to have a lower R0 (that might be due to changed behaviour or to some extent previous higher rates of infection, it's unclear) so your siblings' argument isn't the end of the analysis. One other dimension is that people fall ill and die from specific instances, not averages. If he is trying to reassure your father while encouraging him to maintain social distancing, hand washing, any shielding behaviour and so on then that might be justifiable. If he is saying don't bother as population density will protect your father then I suspect he is wrong.

A rubbish metaphor but parking on a dual carriageway might be safer than being a pedestrian on a motorway but both are dangerous. It might be safer but that doesn't mean it's safe to park up and have a picnic on a dual carriageway just because it's safer. If that were true, everywhere that didn't have the highest R0 wouldn't need to change behaviour at all.

Good luck.

Thanks. Yes he has just reassuring him he was OK and didn't need to worry, but I advised him to wash hands etc. I found this which was quite useful too

www.centreforcities.org/blog/have-uk-cities-been-hotbeds-of-covid-19-pandemic/

Reassuring seems fine to me (I think a majority of each demographic will survive an infection) but not fine to then say don't carry on hand washing/social distancing/shielding as appropriate as COVID is dangerous and even if someone survives, many survivors appear to have long-term adverse health effect.

Yes I was not panicking him or anything- just he told me '(sibling) says it isn't around here' etc so I said it could be and best to wash hands when you get in just in case. Which seemed sensible.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were panicking him, rather your sibling was risking your DF stopping doing sensible precautions.

No, that's OK thanks for the replies it was useful