Social distancing at scale

Intermittent social distancing strategy for epidemic control

We study the critical effect of an intermittent social distancing strategy on the propagation of epidemics in adaptive complex networks. We characterize the effect of our strategy in the framework of the susceptible-infected-recovered model. In our model, based on local information, a susceptible individual interrupts the contact with an infected individual with a probability σ and restores it ...

Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza

Targeted social distancing to mitigate pandemic influenza can be designed through simulation of influenza's spread within local community social contact networks. We demonstrate this design for a stylized community representative of a small town in the United States. The critical importance of children and teenagers in transmission of influenza is first identified and targeted. For influenza as...

Social distancing strategies against disease spreading

The recurrent infectious diseases and their increasing impact on the society has promoted the study of strategies to slow down the epidemic spreading. In this review we outline the applications of percolation theory to describe strategies against epidemic spreading on complex networks. We give a general outlook of the relation between link percolation and the susceptibleinfected-recovered model...

Controlling epidemic spread by social distancing: Do it well or not at all

BACKGROUND Existing epidemiological models have largely tended to neglect the impact of individual behaviour on the dynamics of diseases. However, awareness of the presence of illness can cause people to change their behaviour by, for example, staying at home and avoiding social contacts. Such changes can be used to control epidemics but they exact an economic cost. Our aim is to study the cost...

Title: Controlling Epidemic Spread by Social Distancing: Do It Well or Not at All