Biomedical Engineering: Bridging Medicine and Technology 1st Edition by Veronique Tran,Mark Saltzman

Exercise 3

There are 10 million people in New York City. One person contracts smallpox, and this person subsequently spreads it to the rest of the city.
a. Derive an equation that you can use to find the number of infectious exchanges that must occur to infect 10 million people. Assume that every newly infected person, during the entire course of their sickness, will infect only two new uninfected people. With each new generation of disease propagation, every single newly infected person will also infect only two new uninfected people (see diagram).
b. Assume that each day, a newly infected person will transmit disease to two new uninfected people. Based on your answer from a,howmany days would it take to wipe out the city?
c. Discuss why this scenario is unrealistic.