April 07 2020
The most affected European countries - Italy and Spain - clearly prove the point that Newton's law of universal gravitation and related laws of ballistics based on Newton’s Third Law of Motion are still in force.
An object (infection) will exert a force on another object (population) that interacts with it in its environment (habitat). Forces always exist in pairs. Newton's third law states for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
No matter how high are epidemics’ trajectories, they follow these laws: infection spreads and cases propel up but inevitably come down because of laws of nature. We can affect the height and length of epidemic’s trajectory by putting up resistance (akin air-resistance in ballistics).
Even better, we can prevent or abort epidemics early by building our defenses, vaccinating, following rules of personal and communal hygiene, identifying and isolating infected people, tracing contacts, using chemo-prevention - treating (high risk) exposed contacts, including medical personnel and, if these measures fail - by quarantining population and by applying treatments we (might) have.
The ultimate preventative strategy is to eliminate reservoirs of infections agents and/or its carriers - interim hosts/”vectors” from our habitat. This is not always possible, but one notable example is a campaign to drain swamps and kill mosquitoes, which was successful in nearly eliminating malaria in the areas where these can be accomplished.
Got the point?
