Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2020 March 27

= March 27 =

Communicability
Given the current pandemic, we've been hearing a lot about mortality rates for diseases, but I'd be interested in learning more about relative communicability rates. We have a couple of articles that touch on the topic, such as Infection and Transmission (medicine), but I'm not seeing much that lists objective values. Our article on measles asserts (with a reference and I've seen it confirmed elsewhere) that it is the most easily communicable disease known. Assuming that's true, what would be the top ten or twenty? Given that diseases can travel in wildly different vectors where is a bit of apples to oranges in this, but it seems like there has been some work in determining how many individual germ agents are needed to induce infection in a person with a normal immune system. Do we have that somewhere? Matt Deres (talk) 13:32, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Basic reproduction number may somewhat address this issue. If by "germ agents" you mean the infectious microorganisms (bacteria, viroids), their invidual infectiousness varies wildly and does not correlate in any obvious way with transmission rates. --Lambiam 17:22, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
 * You might find the Microbe-scope illuminating.--Phil Holmes (talk) 10:26, 28 March 2020 (UTC)