Posts

Showing posts from January, 2021

What winter tourism, ethnicity and employment structure tells us about SARS-Cov2 spreading

Image
In the first post in the, hopefully, better 2021 we'll again make a short trip to the northern Italian province South Tyrol. Well, there are multiple reasons, you may love northern Italy: magnificent alpine landscape, fine wine and cuisine, better coffee than on the other side of the Alps... For a data scientist, there is one more: excellent public data availability, both concerning the COVID-19 pandemic and stats for cities and villages. It's enough, you go to the province or the federal statistical authority portal or the local COVID-19 dashboard and you may freely download even the most insane data for each South Tyrolean and Italian commune - simply great! It gives us a unique opportunity to analyze the course of the SARS-Cov2 outbreak in South Tyrol, in particular the spring and fall/winter waves, and identify some factors fostering the spread and, with a bit of imagination, speculate on a local protective (herd) immunity against the pathogen.   As usual, the scripts of