Without interventions, N i = 87% of the population become infected during the course of the epidemic and the cumulative number of outpatients reaches N o = 29%, reflecting the assumption that approximately one third of infected individuals becomes sufficiently sick to seek medical help. These outcomes remain surprisingly stable even for interventions assuming optimistic resources (cf. footnotes to Figures 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5). For instance, immediate and unlimited availability of antivirals reduces these fractions only to N i = 72% and N o = 24% ( Figure 2 ). This minor effect has three reasons: only about one third of cases seeks medical help and will receive antiviral treatment, many infections are passed on before cases seek medical help and antiviral treatment does not fully prevent further transmission. These disadvantages do not apply to contact reduction measures. For instance, a reduction of 20% of contacts reduces these fractions to N i = 68% and N o = 22% ( Figures 4A, B) . A combination of antiviral treatment and contact reduction can further reduce these values to N i = 53% and N o = 18% ( Figure 5 ).