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by blakesterz 2079 days ago
I really struggle reading academic studies still...

"Heterogeneity in contact structure and individual variation in infectivity, susceptibility, and resistance are key factors that reduce the disease-induced herd immunity levels to 34.2-47.5% in our models."

I THINK that means, in addition to how infectious COVID is, and how susceptible and resistant people are in general, one of the other things that impact herd immunity is "contact structure" and it tends to be sort of limited. There seems to be plenty of "Heterogeneity in contact structure" studies done on many other things out there, so it looks like this is something that's already understood. If I understand it correctly, it means that most people have limited contacts, and while we all might be "6 degrees" from everyone else, we're not directly contacting all those people, and so that could help with herd immunity. So that maybe reduces the number from 74% to this 34-47% number, which better.

Does that mean "Heterogeneity in contact structure" is different for people based on things like how often we go out, where we go, how we travel and where we live? e.g. a subway/bus trip in Manhattan, NY is different than driving alone in Manhattan, KS.

1 comments

Yeah, that's what it's referring to. People with more points of contact are both more likely to catch the virus and have a larger impact on herd immunity once they're immune.
An example of applying such a concept: vaccinating healthcare workers ahead of otherwise isolated people.

I presume many healthcare workers see orders of magnitude more people per day than average and those people are more likely to be sick (else why are they getting healthcare?) .