Does a simple quadratic model really work for modeling disease spread? Other factors that seem critical:
How closely connected each new person you see is to the others in your prior network of contacts
The degree to which people trade off safety precautions against additional risk
The number of people you see in the window during which you could be infectious
The fact that the kind of person who’s seeing lots of other people might also be the kind of person to eschew other safety precautions
Whether or not you see these contacts every day, or whether you see a sequence of new contacts without seeing the previous people in the sequence
Before I used anything like this to try and model the effect of changing the number of contacts, I’d really want to see some more robust simulation.
Some aspects of this model seem plausible on its face. For example, a recluse who starts to see one person only puts himself at risk. If he starts seeing two people, though, he’s now creating a bridge between them, putting them both at elevated risk.
Does a simple quadratic model really work for modeling disease spread? Other factors that seem critical:
How closely connected each new person you see is to the others in your prior network of contacts
The degree to which people trade off safety precautions against additional risk
The number of people you see in the window during which you could be infectious
The fact that the kind of person who’s seeing lots of other people might also be the kind of person to eschew other safety precautions
Whether or not you see these contacts every day, or whether you see a sequence of new contacts without seeing the previous people in the sequence
Before I used anything like this to try and model the effect of changing the number of contacts, I’d really want to see some more robust simulation.
Some aspects of this model seem plausible on its face. For example, a recluse who starts to see one person only puts himself at risk. If he starts seeing two people, though, he’s now creating a bridge between them, putting them both at elevated risk.