Monday, March 23, 2020

CORONAVIRUS --The Levitt Exponential Decay Model-- & NATURAL SELECTION

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"...Dinosaurs had their shot and nature selected them for extinction..."    

(MSG/CTR)--As reported in the LA Times by Joe Mozingo, this past week, a Stanford biophysicist has correctly predicted the drop in cases and total victims of the COVID-19 virus in China. It was based not on a cumulative model, but a daily increase-decrease in detected cases;
     "Although the number of daily deaths had increased, the rate of that increase had begun to ease off. In his view, the fact that new cases were being identified at a slower rate was more telling than the number of new cases itself. It was an early sign that the trajectory of the outbreak had shifted." (LA Times)
     The discovery of the slowdown led eventually to a dropoff of new cases completely in Hubei, and as Ari Libsker reports further in the Calcalist, on Levitt's observations;
     "Levitt compared the situation to bank interest—if on the first day a person receives an interest rate of 30% on their savings, the next day of 29%, and so forth, 'you understand that eventually, you will not earn very much..' ”  (Calcalist)

Michael Levitt Analysis: Corona Is Slowing Down, Humanity Will Survive

Interview Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, an American-British-Israeli biophysicist who teaches structural biology at Stanford University and spends much of his time in Tel Aviv, unexpectedly became a household name in China, offering the public reassurance during the peak of the country's coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak.

     What is missing from both of the articles is the background of the Nobel prize winner, Levitt is a biochemist. He isn't a statistician nor a mathematician even though he appears to have a solid grasp of how exponents work. But there's more to the theory than just graphs dropping off when they reach a certain limit. The gradual demise of the virus might be related to a radioactive decay process so that even while it is growing at a staggering pace worldwide, it is also rapidly disintegrating over time.
Even more inherent in the lifespan of the virus might be another process beyond the professional grasp of the biochemist, it's called Natural Selection.
     Some organisms are endowed with the capability to live a very long time, others only briefly, no matter how rapidly they expand in numbers. The range of longevity extends from just a few days as in the case of the mayfly that might live longer than a day to a queen termite that lives 50 years. (Zoo Portraits) Currently, the greatest number of deaths for the deadly pandemic virus is out of Italy, a country that also records one of the largest number of humans living 100 years and more.
     Studies have been done to illustrate how long the new virus can survive on a surface before someone comes into contact with it. (Science Alert) But "longevity" and "survival" are two different things. Studies on survival of a virus focus on presence in the environment, whether it can even be defined as a living organism and how long it can continue to exist inside the human body. Other studies are similar in one way or another to the Levitt Decay Model, but are dependent on mathematical elements such as statistical surveys, coefficients of the variables, and ultimately, the use of an exponential model to predict the outcome. None of it is based on the unique "irrational" model offered by the environment itself, that of Natural Selection.
 


Relevant here is what has been famously called the "Jurassic Park: Lunch Debate Scene" where Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) argues with scientist-creator John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) of the dinosaur park that he is a kid who's found his Dad's gun:

HAMMOND  "If I was to create a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn't have anything to say..."
MALCOLM
"Now hold on,  this isn't some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs had their shot and nature selected them for extinction. " (Jurassic Park, 1993)

     A theory of exponential decay arrived at by observing the rate of increase-decrease of cases of viral spread in a given environment, controlled or otherwise, like the equation on which is based, is speculation, synthetic, inductive.  Anything might cause a reversal in the decline of confirmed cases. Certainly induction is the scientific method employed in most theoretical models based on observation but it only accounts for the result, not the cause.
     Malcolm's argument is analytical, he bases it on wholly unforeseen and misunderstood force of the real world we have come to know as "natural selection." Built into the model that Dr. Malcolm presents to Hammond is one of longevity and some force where nature decides, or has already ordained, how long the species will exist on the planet. Species entails life form, a virus borders on the precipice of the living and is thus exposed to the forces that rule its existence, namely, longevity.
     From an analytic standpoint, the virus could only exist for a given length of time before some totally unexplained force, observed through exponential decay, would cause its destruction, that force is natural selection. COVID-19 has a limit of longevity and much like the exponential model that predicts it, can only expand to a certain point before the expansion deteriorates, bringing about the ultimate demise of the virus. From an evolutionary-anthropological viewpoint, it simply withers away, lingering but doomed to its predetermined lifespan on the planet.


Sources

Levitt, https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-nobel-laureate-predicts-quicker-210318391.html
Calcalist, https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3800632,00.html
Zoo Portraits, https://www.zooportraits.com/animal-longevity/
Science Alert, https://www.sciencealert.com/study-shows-just-how-long-coronaviruses-can-stick-around-on-a-surface
Jurassic Park: Lunch Debate Scene, https://youtu.be/ldD_4Puw6RM
Dr, Levitt, https://profiles.stanford.edu/michael-levitt,  michael.levitt@stanford.edu


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