To understand the next pandemic, we must understand our own collective behavior

Medical Xpress September 12, 2024
Noah Lloyd, Northeastern University

Northeastern University researchers are developing epidemic models that incorporate collective behavioral patterns, which will help policymakers make better decisions in both future pandemics and other public crises.

Social distancing, as a strategy, was largely effective at decreasing the rates of COVID-19 transmission when the virus first appeared in early 2020—where it was practiced.

But social distancing was unevenly adopted across the United States and the world, leading to unexpected complications in the models that epidemiologists used to forecast the course of the virus.

How could policymakers have predicted which regions might take up social distancing wholeheartedly, and how could they have adjusted their messaging in areas that were predisposed against it?

Along the same lines, how could modelers have predicted...

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