Economically-Motivated Interactions and Disease Spread

Abstract

Human interaction is largely centered on interactions at home, school, work, and shopping. This economically-motivated partial spatial compartmentalization of our lives, in particular the persistent and recurring interaction with a very limited number of people, is surely of first-order importance for the modeling of disease spread that depends on human contact. This paper models the movement of people throughout the day to match data on the distribution of households by size and age of occupants, the distribution of K-12 schools and colleges by size and staff-student ratios, and the distribution of office and retail establishments by number of employees. The spread of disease calibrated to COVID-19 characteristics is significantly less in this model than in a corresponding SIR model in which people interact in one large location. Simulations of this model also reveal that large-scale compliance to a mitigation policy only directing symptomatic people to stay home is sufficient to control the widespread of a disease such as COVID-19, without any noticeable employment effects. A partial lockdown policy is also shown to control the widespread of such a disease, but at a cost of considerable employment effects.

Note: Funding: None to declare

Declaration of Interest: None to declare

Keywords: SIR, COVID-19, epidemic, disease spread mitigation

JEL Classification: C6, I10