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Covid19: Unless one gets everyone to act, policies may be ineffective or even backfire

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  • Alessio Muscillo
  • Paolo Pin
  • Tiziano Razzolini

Abstract

The diffusion of Covid-19 has called governments and public health authorities to interventions aiming at limiting new infections and containing the expected number of critical cases and deaths. Most of these measures rely on the compliance of people, who are asked to reduce their social contacts to a minimum. In this note we argue that individuals’ adherence to prescriptions and reduction of social activity may not be efficacious if not implemented robustly on all social groups, especially on those characterized by intense mixing patterns. Actually, it is possible that, if those who have many contacts have reduced them proportionally less than those who have few, then the effect of a policy could have backfired: the disease has taken more time to die out, up to the point that it has become endemic. In a nutshell, unless one gets everyone to act, and specifically those who have more contacts, a policy may even be counterproductive.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessio Muscillo & Paolo Pin & Tiziano Razzolini, 2020. "Covid19: Unless one gets everyone to act, policies may be ineffective or even backfire," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-6, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0237057
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237057
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    Cited by:

    1. Gregory Gutin & Tomohiro Hirano & Sung-Ha Hwang & Philip R. Neary & Alexis Akira Toda, 2021. "The effect of social distancing on the reach of an epidemic in social networks," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 16(3), pages 629-647, July.
    2. Temitayo Deborah Oyedotun, 2022. "Quizzing Online: Perspectives And Impacts," Education, Sustainability & Society (ESS), Zibeline International Publishing, vol. 5(1), pages 14-20, March.

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