scholarly journals Where to learn to flatten the curve: a modelling study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J Silk ◽  
Simon Carrignon ◽  
R. Alexander Bentley ◽  
Nina H Fefferman
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Communication Networks ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Physical Layer ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Epidemiological Risk ◽  
Perceived Social Norms

Background: Individual behavioural decisions are responses to both a persons perceived social norms and could be driven by both their physical and social environment. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, these environments correspond to epidemiological risk from contacts and the social construction of risk by communication within networks of friends. Understanding when, and under which circumstances, each modality of influence can foster the widespread adoption of protective behaviours is critical for shaping useful, practical public health messaging that will best enhance the public response. Methods: We use a multiplex network approach to explore how information from both physical contact and social communication networks is driving a mitigating behavioural response to disease risk. Findings: We show that maintaining focus on awareness of risk in each individuals physical layer contacts promotes the greatest reduction in disease spread, but only when an individual is aware of the symptoms of a non-trivial proportion of their physical contacts (approximately 20% or more). Information from the communication layer was less useful when these connections matched less well with physical contacts and contributed little in combination with accurate information from the physical layer. Interpretation: We conclude that maintaining social focus on local outbreak status will allow individuals to structure their perceived social norms appropriately and respond more rapidly when risk increases. Finding ways to relay accurate local information from trusted community leaders could improve mitigation even where more intrusive/costly strategies, such as contact-tracing, are not possible.

scholarly journals Observations and conversations: how communities learn about infection risk can impact the success of non-pharmaceutical interventions against epidemics

2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Silk ◽  
Simon Carrignon ◽  
R. Alexander Bentley ◽  
Nina H. Fefferman
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Communication Layer ◽  
Perceived Social Norms ◽  
Pharmaceutical Interventions

Abstract Background Individual behavioural decisions are responses to a person’s perceived social norms that could be shaped by both their physical and social environment. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, these environments correspond to epidemiological risk from contacts and the social construction of risk by communication within networks of friends. Understanding the circumstances under which the influence of these different social networks can promote the acceptance of non-pharmaceutical interventions and consequently the adoption of protective behaviours is critical for guiding useful, practical public health messaging. Methods We explore how information from both physical contact and social communication layers of a multiplex network can contribute to flattening the epidemic curve in a community. Connections in the physical contact layer represent opportunities for transmission, while connections in the communication layer represent social interactions through which individuals may gain information, e.g. messaging friends. Results We show that maintaining focus on awareness of risk among each individual’s physical contacts promotes the greatest reduction in disease spread, but only when an individual is aware of the symptoms of a non-trivial proportion of their physical contacts (~ ≥ 20%). Information from the social communication layer without was less useful when these connections matched less well with physical contacts and contributed little in combination with accurate information from physical contacts. Conclusions We conclude that maintaining social focus on local outbreak status will allow individuals to structure their perceived social norms appropriately and respond more rapidly when risk increases. Finding ways to relay accurate local information from trusted community leaders could improve mitigation even where more intrusive/costly strategies, such as contact-tracing, are not possible.

scholarly journals How detection ranges and usage stops impact digital contact tracing effectiveness for COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantin D. Pandl ◽  
Scott Thiebes ◽  
Manuel Schmidt-Kraepelin ◽  
Ali Sunyaev
Keyword(s):  
Disease Spread ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Behavioral Characteristics ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Detection Range ◽  
Proximity Detection ◽  
Effective Technology ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency ◽  
The Impact

AbstractTo combat the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the globe have adopted digital contact tracing apps. Various technologies exist to trace contacts that are potentially prone to different types of tracing errors. Here, we study the impact of different proximity detection ranges on the effectiveness and efficiency of digital contact tracing apps. Furthermore, we study a usage stop effect induced by a false positive quarantine. Our results reveal that policy makers should adjust digital contact tracing apps to the behavioral characteristics of a society. Based on this, the proximity detection range should at least cover the range of a disease spread, and be much wider in certain cases. The widely used Bluetooth Low Energy protocol may not necessarily be the most effective technology for contact tracing.

scholarly journals Impact of essential workers in the context of social distancing for epidemic control

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0255680
Author(s):  
William R. Milligan ◽  
Zachary L. Fuller ◽  
Ipsita Agarwal ◽  
Michael B. Eisen ◽  
Molly Przeworski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Individual Probability ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Essential Services ◽  
Human Costs ◽  
Target Intervention

New emerging infectious diseases are identified every year, a subset of which become global pandemics like COVID-19. In the case of COVID-19, many governments have responded to the ongoing pandemic by imposing social policies that restrict contacts outside of the home, resulting in a large fraction of the workforce either working from home or not working. To ensure essential services, however, a substantial number of workers are not subject to these limitations, and maintain many of their pre-intervention contacts. To explore how contacts among such “essential” workers, and between essential workers and the rest of the population, impact disease risk and the effectiveness of pandemic control, we evaluated several mathematical models of essential worker contacts within a standard epidemiology framework. The models were designed to correspond to key characteristics of cashiers, factory employees, and healthcare workers. We find in all three models that essential workers are at substantially elevated risk of infection compared to the rest of the population, as has been documented, and that increasing the numbers of essential workers necessitates the imposition of more stringent controls on contacts among the rest of the population to manage the pandemic. Importantly, however, different archetypes of essential workers differ in both their individual probability of infection and impact on the broader pandemic dynamics, highlighting the need to understand and target intervention for the specific risks faced by different groups of essential workers. These findings, especially in light of the massive human costs of the current COVID-19 pandemic, indicate that contingency plans for future epidemics should account for the impacts of essential workers on disease spread.

scholarly journals Why Do People (Not) Engage in Social Distancing? Proximate and Ultimate Analyses of Norm-Following During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
James O. Norton ◽  
Kortnee C. Evans ◽  
Ayten Yesim Semchenko ◽  
Laith Al-Shawaf ◽  
David M. G. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Preliminary Investigation ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Public Health Organizations ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Perceived Social Norms ◽  
The Impact

COVID-19 has had a profound negative effect on many aspects of human life. While pharmacological solutions are being developed and implemented, the onus of mitigating the impact of the virus falls, in part, on individual citizens and their adherence to public health guidelines. However, promoting adherence to these guidelines has proven challenging. There is a pressing need to understand the factors that influence people’s adherence to these guidelines in order to improve public compliance. To this end, the current study investigated whether people’s perceptions of others’ adherence predict their own adherence. We also investigated whether any influence of perceived social norms was mediated by perceptions of the moral wrongness of non-adherence, anticipated shame for non-adherence, or perceptions of disease severity. One hundred fifty-two Australians participated in our study between June 6, 2020 and August 21, 2020. Findings from this preliminary investigation suggest that (1) people match their behavior to perceived social norms, and (2) this is driven, at least in part, by people using others’ behavior as a cue to the severity of disease threat. Such findings provide insight into the proximate and ultimate bases of norm-following behavior, and shed preliminary light on public health-related behavior in the context of a pandemic. Although further research is needed, the results of this study—which suggest that people use others’ behavior as a cue to how serious the pandemic is and as a guide for their own behavior—could have important implications for public health organizations, social movements, and political leaders and the role they play in the fight against epidemics and pandemics.

Actual and perceived social norms of children’s road crossing behavior

2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tova Rosenbloom ◽  
Ofri Hadari-Carmi ◽  
Yael Sapir-Lavid
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Perceived Social Norms ◽  
Road Crossing

scholarly journals Host size and proximity to diseased neighbours drive the spread of a coral disease outbreak in Hawai‘i

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1870) ◽  
pp. 20172265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie M. Caldwell ◽  
Megan J. Donahue ◽  
C. Drew Harvell
Keyword(s):  
Disease Risk ◽  
Coral Disease ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Disease Outbreak ◽  
Host Size ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Wildlife Diseases ◽  
Infectious Individual ◽  
Force Of Infection ◽  
Affected Tissue

Understanding how disease risk varies over time and across heterogeneous populations is critical for managing disease outbreaks, but this information is rarely known for wildlife diseases. Here, we demonstrate that variation in host and pathogen factors drive the direction, duration and intensity of a coral disease outbreak. We collected longitudinal health data for 200 coral colonies, and found that disease risk increased with host size and severity of diseased neighbours, and disease spread was highest among individuals between 5 and 20 m apart. Disease risk increased by 2% with every 10 cm increase in host size. Healthy colonies with severely diseased neighbours (greater than 75% affected tissue) were 1.6 times more likely to develop disease signs compared with colonies with moderately diseased neighbours (25–75% affected tissue). Force of infection ranged from 7 to 20 disease cases per 1000 colonies (mean = 15 cases per 1000 colonies). The effective reproductive ratio, or average number of secondary infections per infectious individual, ranged from 0.16 to 1.22. Probability of transmission depended strongly on proximity to diseased neighbours, which demonstrates that marine disease spread can be highly constrained within patch reefs.

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