Probability of knowing someone infected with coronavirus

[jfahenriques]

Hi,

I was trying to calculate the probability of a person in a given country knowing someone infected with coronavirus.
Let's say that:
country population = pop
number of infected people in the country = inf
person's acquaintances= acq

My initial idea was to use a binomial approach, considering that probability of "success"=inf/pop

and then calculating the probability of X>=1, with the number of trials being the number of acquaintances (acq)

Would this be a proper approach?

 

[Romsek]

I would add 2 factors.
1) the probability that the person actually interacts with an acquaintance; and
2) the probability that the virus transfers from the infected acquaintance during an interaction

neither of these is going to be 1

These can just be multiplied by the probability an acquaintance is infected i.e. [MATH]\dfrac{\text{# infected}}{\text{population}}[/MATH]