I would like to thank those of you who have set this up and who have signed up. At the moment it is not clear what I can do myself, given other commitments, but I have already proposed Covid as the next general project for my graduate student.
I would like to know if anyone has found modeling being done based on viral load, either within an individual, or in public spaces. I have found some work being done at U. Illinois (Goldenfeld and Maslov) and in Brazil (Manchon is one of the authors) and elsewhere, but I have not concentrated on it.
It seems to me that there could be something like a finite-size system phase transition when people are in a room long enough and when one of them is releasing a significant viral load. Of course, viral load and significant won't take on meaning until some modeling is done.
This suggestion does not consider cases where infected person A is in close contact for a long time with person B. It is a matter of a collective effect with lots of asymptomatic people who are either immune to the virus, slightly susceptible to it, or very susceptible to it.
I imagine that there are many scenarios here and that Monte Carlo methods would be a valuable tool. People who have worked on avalanches might be well-positioned for work on this sort of thing.
------------------------------
Wayne Saslow
Texas A&M Univ
College Station TX
979-575-6812
------------------------------