From: Axel Brandenburg To: Axel Brandenburg Cc: Bcc: Subject: Re: Fw: Your manuscript JPhysA-117843 - Revisions required Reply-To: In-Reply-To: <48dd336365b64f5aa38d337dc8c7589b@kth.se> On Mon, Dec 19, 2022 at 10:33:49AM +0000, Axel Brandenburg wrote: > > > > ________________________________ > From: Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical > Sent: 19 December 2022 10:51 > To: brandenb@nordita.org; axel.brandenburg@colorado.edu > Cc: brandenb@nordita.org; axel.brandenburg@colorado.edu > Subject: Your manuscript JPhysA-117843 - Revisions required > > Dear Professor Brandenburg, > > Re: "Quadratic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic: merging hotspots and reinfections" > > Manuscript reference: JPhysA-117843 > > The reviewer report(s) for your Special Issue Article are now complete. They recommend that you make some revisions before further consideration by Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical. > > You can find the report(s) below and/or attached to this message. 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Please let us know if you need more time. > > We look forward to hearing from you soon. > > Yours sincerely, > > Lewis Armstrong > > > On behalf of: > Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical > Editor-in-Chief: J A Minahan > > iopscience.org/jphysa | jphysa@ioppublishing.org | https://twitter.com/JPhysA > Impact Factor: 2.331 | Citescore: 4 > > Want to find out what is happening to your submission? > Track your article on: > Publishing support https://bit.ly/39t9yPz > WeChat https://bit.ly/2L0M9uz > > ioppublishing.org| twitter.com/IOPPublishing > > REVIEWER REPORT(S): > > Referee: 1 > > COMMENTS TO THE AUTHOR(S) > Review report attached as a file named JPhysA-117843_review.pdf > > Referee: 2 > > COMMENTS TO THE AUTHOR(S) > This is a follow-up study of the author's previous work in Ref.[13]. In the present manuscript, he includes more recent data on the number of Covid-related death worldwide to demonstrate that the quadratic growth identified in Ref.[13] continues, but with a reduced and variable prefactor (Fig. 1). The variation of the prefactor is attributed to effects of merging infection hotspots and reinfection, which are modeled using a spatially extended SIR-model with simple initial conditions. This is a short and somewhat sketchy paper, but it does contain some interesting ideas and is principally suited for publication in the Special Issue on Epidemic modeling. The following points should be addressed before I can recommend acceptance of the manuscript: > > 1. There appears to be an error in the references (question mark in the second paragraph of the Introduction; some citations are incorrect). > > 2. The source of the data used in Figure 1 and Table 1 should be clearly cited. > > 3. Figure 2 is identical to a figure in Ref.[13], and should therefore be removed. > > 4. In the statement of the conservation law S + I + R = const. it should be mentioned that this refers to spatial integrals of the fields. > > 5. I find the concluding statements "Subsequent variations in the number of cases and deaths can be explained by variations in the reinfection rate....The level of reinfections can easily be fluctuating because of seasonal and other effects, which explains the long period of growth with piecewise different slopes" a bit vague. According to Fig. 1 and > Table 1, the prefactor of the growth law has been decreasing systematically since day 50. Can the model explain this trend, or not? > > Letter reference: DEC:ModRev:S