By Michael J. Leach
Michael J Leach (@m_jleach) is a poet and Senior Lecturer at Monash University in Bendigo, Australia. His debut poetry collection—a health-themed chapbook—is forthcoming from Melbourne Poets Union.
This concrete poem was inspired by content from a university report to the Australian Government1: ‘The basic reproduction number (R0) is the reproduction number when there is no immunity from past exposures or vaccination, nor any deliberate intervention in disease transmission…[The reproduction number] is defined as the mean number of infections generated during the infectious period of a single infective.’
1. Becker NG, Glass K, Barnes B, Caley P, Philp D, McCaw J, McVernon J, Wood J. Using Mathematical Models to Assess Responses to an Outbreak of an Emerged Viral Respiratory Disease. National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University: Canberra, 2006, p 6. Available here.
This piece first appeared in the What I Did Last Week: Online Exhibition Week 19 by Creative Communities, City of Greater Bendigo.
Ingenious!