The Critical Numbers Game : How Models can Inform the Pandemic Policy Response from Lockdown to Reboot

The policy measures taken to address the coronavirus pandemic have plunged the global economy into the greatest recession since the 1930s. These measures were motivated in the first instance by the experience in regions where the virus was uncontained and resulted in overwhelmed medical systems and exponentially growing mortality figures. However, from the very early days of the pandemic, data and quantitative models played a role in informing health officials as to what it was that they were dealing with and appear to have played an important role in supporting decisions to take the draconian measures required to bring the pandemic under control. In this note, we comment on the potential use of model simulations in policy formation and in the public debate in supporting the development of protocols to reboot economies on a basis that keeps the transmissibility of the virus below the threshold where it is able to propagate through the population, and minimizes the risk of mortality