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Trains now on Uber. T's and C's apply check the Uber app. This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Waite Gibbs.

Public health experts shake their heads at the chaotic political divisions and

inconsistent policies that have undermined attempts to control the

spread of COVID-19 through much of the world. But a new study by mathematicians in Germany and the UK has applied the tools of Chaos

Theory to show that divisions of a constructive kind could actually bring the pandemic

under control much more effectively.

The research was done at the University of Oxford, Gerdigan University, and the Max Planck

Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization.

The group built a mathematical model of coronavirus transmission that accounts for the inherently random ways that the number of infections fluctuates over time.

They notice that case counts within small populations sometimes drop all the way to zero as long as people are

wearing masks, social distancing, and taking the other standard precautions.

Those spontaneous extinctions of the disease made them wonder.

If the small towns or counties did more to isolate themselves

from neighboring communities,

would that sometimes extinguish COVID-19

enough that they could lift restrictions

and resume more of normal life for longer periods

until the disease popped up again.

A rigorous mathematical analysis showed that indeed this kind of divide and conquer strategy can work,

...