Pisano Gabriele, Royer-Carfagni Gianni
Construction Technologies Institute - Italian National Research Council (ITC-CNR), Viale Lombardia 49, 20098 San Giuliano Milanese, Milano, Italy.
Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze 181/A, 43100 Parma, Italy.
Proc Math Phys Eng Sci. 2020 Dec;476(2244):20200394. doi: 10.1098/rspa.2020.0394. Epub 2020 Dec 23.
The proposed theory defines a relative index of epidemic lethality that compares any two configurations in different observation periods, preferably one in the acute and the other in a mild epidemic phase. Raw mortality data represent the input, with no need to recognize the cause of death. Data are categorized according to the victims' age, which must be renormalized because older people have a greater probability of developing a level of physical decay (human damage), favouring critical pathologies and co-morbidities. The probabilistic dependence of human damage on renormalized age is related to a death criterion considering a virus spread by contagion and our capacity to cure the disease. Remarkably, this is reminiscent of the Weibull theory of the strength of brittle structures containing a population of crack-like defects, in the correlation between the statistical distribution of cracks and the risk of fracture at a prescribed stress level. Age-of-death scaling laws are predicted in accordance with data collected in Italian regions and provinces during the first wave of COVID-19, taken as representative examples to validate the theory. For the prevention of spread and the management of the epidemic, the various parameters of the theory shall be informed on other existing epidemiological models.
所提出的理论定义了一个流行病致死率相对指数，该指数可比较不同观察期内的任意两种情况，最好是一种处于急性流行期，另一种处于轻度流行期。原始死亡率数据作为输入，无需确定死因。数据按受害者年龄分类，由于老年人出现身体衰退（人体损伤）达到一定程度的可能性更大，更易出现严重病症和合并症，因此必须对年龄进行重新归一化处理。人体损伤对重新归一化年龄的概率依赖性与一个死亡标准相关，该标准考虑了通过接触传播的病毒以及我们治愈该疾病的能力。值得注意的是，这让人想起含有大量类似裂纹缺陷的脆性结构强度的威布尔理论，即裂纹的统计分布与规定应力水平下的断裂风险之间的相关性。根据在意大利各地区和省份第一波新冠疫情期间收集的数据预测了死亡年龄缩放定律，这些数据被用作验证该理论的代表性实例。为了预防疫情传播和进行疫情管理，该理论的各种参数应参考其他现有的流行病学模型。
