Dynamics and Control of Covid-19: Comments by Two Mathematicians

TL;DR

This paper discusses the role of mathematics in understanding and controlling Covid-19, comparing different countries' pandemic evolutions and exploring mathematical methods applied to pandemic problems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of how various mathematical approaches are used to analyze and address Covid-19 challenges from a problem-oriented perspective.

Findings

Different countries experienced Covid-19 evolution uniquely.

Mathematical methods are crucial in modeling pandemic dynamics.

Mathematics aids in vaccine development and testing analysis.

Abstract

We are asking: why are the dynamics and control of Covid-19 most interesting for mathematicians and why are mathematicians urgently needed for controlling the pandemic? First we present our comments in a Bottom-up approach, i.e., following the events from their beginning as they evolved through time. They happened differently in different countries, and the main objective of the first part is to compare these evolutions in a few selected countries with each other. The second part of the article is not "country-oriented" but "problem-oriented". From a given problem we go Top-down to its solutions and their applications in concrete situations. We have organized this part by the mathematical methods that play a role in their solution. We give an overview of the main branches of mathematics that play a role and sketch the most frequent applications, emphasising mathematical pattern analysis in laboratory work and statistical-mathematical models in judging the quality of tests; demographic methods in the collection of data; different ways to model the evolution of the pandemic mathematically; and clinical epidemiology in attempts to develop a vaccine.