How much Covid in the World?
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2021
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If we brought all the virus particles of the Sars-CoV-2 virus from every human currently infected, how much would there be? This was a question posed by one of our listeners. We lined up two experts to try to work this out. YouTube maths nerd Matt Parker and Kit Yates, senior lecturer in mathematical biology at the University of Bath, UK give us their best estimates. One believes the particles would fit into a small can of coke, the other a spoonful.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service, with a program that explores |
| 0:05.2 | the numbers in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Haferd. Today we have a slightly unusual |
| 0:11.2 | question from a listener. Kyle Marsh contacted at BBC More or Less on Twitter to ask, |
| 0:19.2 | If you could gather all the Covid particles in the world in one place, what would the |
| 0:23.5 | volume of that collection be? Would they fill a thimble, a mug, a swimming pool? |
| 0:28.4 | To answer this fascinating question, I am joined by Kit Yates, the author of The Maths of Life and Death, |
| 0:36.4 | and by Matt Parker, the stand-up mathematician, and the author of Humboldt Pie. So, gentlemen, |
| 0:43.8 | what have you concluded? What would the volume be of all the virus particles in the world? |
| 0:48.5 | So I think if you put them all together, I think you'd get about 160 milliliters, maybe half a kind of coke. |
| 0:55.2 | Oh right, I got exactly 7.98 milliliters. Oh, call that 8 mil. I think I'm a little bit off. |
| 1:02.7 | Comfortably. With the accuracy, yeah. Yeah, if in doubt, go with unnecessary levels of precision. |
| 1:09.4 | Yeah, I mean, he was what, to three significant figures, you know it. So, in one corner, |
| 1:14.4 | a mathematical biologist at the University of Bath in the UK with 160 milliliters of virus, |
| 1:21.1 | in the other, a superstar of nerd YouTube with 8 milliliters. Who's right? There's only one way to |
| 1:29.1 | find out. And I'm really, really hoping that the answer isn't going to be that somebody just |
| 1:35.2 | got some multiplication wrong or a Mr. decimal point. That would be awkward. So, the first task |
| 1:41.3 | is probably to find out how many virus particles there are in the world at any one time point, |
| 1:46.4 | and I'm going to assume it's just humans that have SARS-CoV-2 virus in them at the moment, |
| 1:52.3 | and that any animal reservoir isn't particularly significant. I made that assumption as well, |
| 1:56.6 | just so we're keeping track. Good. Yeah, we're on course so far. So, we need an estimate of how many |
| 2:01.6 | people are infected at any one time, and our world in data, they suggest about half a million |
| 2:08.1 | people get newly infected a day, but we know that even in countries that are doing a lot of testing, |
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