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This is is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

Here in New York, the coronavirus cases are exploding. We're on the steep part of the curve.

Now you've probably heard about the basic reproduction number, R0 or R0, and that's basically how many people an infected person goes on to infect themselves.

And the other night I happened to see a tweet that showed just how big a difference there is over 10 cycles of

transmission between a basic reproduction number of 1.3 and a basic reproduction number of 3. The difference was

astounding. The 1.3 after 10 cycles infected on average 14 other people total. The basic reproduction number of 3.0 led to

59,000. Looking at those numbers was startling.

So I got a calculator out.

And I'm gonna repeat this exercise

that I did with the calculator.

And you can do it too.

It's even a little bit fun,

and it's kind of amazing.

So I've got two calculators because I'm going to do the two different basic reproduction numbers,

the R-noughs together.

Okay, so the calculator on my left, I'm going to assume 1.3 as the basic reproduction number.

Each person infects 1.3 other people on average. The

calculator on the right I'm going to do 2.5 just to pick a number and because

that looks like it may be fairly close to what the

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