If you read the recent scientific literature of disease ecology, which is highly mathematical, and which I do not recommend unless you are deeply interested or troubled with insomnia, you find the basic reproduction rate everywhere. It’s the alpha and omega of the field, the point where infectious disease analysis starts and ends. In the equations, this variable appears as R0, pronounced aloud by the cognoscenti as “R-naught.” (It’s a little confusing, I concede, that they use R0 as the symbol for basic reproduction rate and plain R as the symbol for recovered in an SIR model.
