By Hans Kaper
On the second day of the summer school on “Dynamics and Data in the COVID-19 Pandemic”—organized by the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) and the Mathematics and Climate Research Network (MCRN)— participants began their quest for questions.
Report on the SIAM News articles related to COVID-19 research
Since few participating students are familiar with the dynamics of infectious diseases and pandemics like COVID-19, it made sense to begin with a report on the previous day’s homework assignment: students had to read one of the COVID-19 articles from the May and June issues of SIAM News and present the highlights during an all-hands meeting. This collection of articles, which included drafts of two additional pieces that will publish in the July/August combined issue of SIAM News, illustrates the broad spectrum of scientific issues associated with COVID-19 and the variety of mathematical, statistical, and computational techniques that can tackle these issues.
Additional activities
Everyone then watched a video presentation of an introductory talk on susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR) models by Nina Fefferman (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), which she recorded at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis.
The afternoon was devoted to a role-playing session that addressed the types of questions that arise for decision-makers. Participants met in groups of four in a member’s virtual office, where two members played the role of policymakers and the other two acted as scientists. The roles were reversed during the second part of the session. Each group chose a particular setting (level of decision-making, scale of the issue in question, type of authority, etc.), area of scientist expertise (modeler, statistician, virologist, etc.), and a theme (reopening processes for schools, testing procedures, public health campaigns, etc.). The exercise meant to simulate the interaction between two sides working towards a common goal, the conflicting demands on both sides, and ways to prevent a breakdown in discussion. The groups reported anecdotes from their sessions in an all-hands meeting. Between the two halves of the session, everyone had the opportunity to relax with some tai chi.
The day’s homework assignment instructed every participant to read the report entitled “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand,” released by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team on March 16, 2020.
Hans Kaper, founding chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Mathematics of Planet Earth and editor-in-chief of SIAM News, is affiliate faculty in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Georgetown University.