January 9, 2024expert reaction to a study claiming that epidemic modelling needs to be overhauled to include social networksA study published in the the Journal of Physics: Complexity looks at knowledge of social networks in epidemic modelling. My experience is primarily within wildlife and livestock disease modelling, where heterogeneity in space and contact structure have been included in many models. Thus, the press release “Models used by scientists to predict how epidemics will spread have a major flaw” starts with a large over-statement. Indeed, other authors have already described the effect of including various types of heterogeneity in COVID models – for example this one published in 2021 https://doi.org/10.1515/cmb-2020-0115. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.05.23296586v2).”‘Epidemic modelling requires knowledge of the social network’ by Samuel Johnson was published in Journal of Physics: Complexity at 9:00 UK time on 9th January 2024.

Source: New York Times January 09, 2024 09:23 UTC