The Visual Social Distancing Problem

One of the main and most effective measures to contain the recent viral outbreak is the maintenance of the so-called Social Distancing (SD). To comply with this constraint, workplaces, public institutions, transports and schools will likely adopt restrictions over the minimum inter-personal distance between people. Given this actual scenario, it is crucial to massively measure the compliance to such physical constraint in our life, in order to figure out the reasons of the possible breaks of such distance limitations, and understand if this implies a possible threat given the scene context. All of this, complying with privacy policies and making the measurement acceptable. To this end, we introduce the Visual Social Distancing (VSD) problem, defined as the automatic estimation of the inter-personal distance from an image, and the characterization of the related people aggregations. VSD is pivotal for a non-invasive analysis to whether people comply with the SD restriction, and to provide statistics about the level of safety of specific areas whenever this constraint is violated. We then discuss how VSD relates with previous literature in Social Signal Processing and indicate which existing Computer Vision methods can be used to manage such problem. We conclude with future challenges related to the effectiveness of VSD systems, ethical implications and future application scenarios.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. All the authors equally contributed to this manuscript and they are listed by alphabetical order. Under submissio

The Effect of Social Distancing on the Reach of an Epidemic in Social Networks

How does social distancing affect the reach of an epidemic in social networks? We present Monte Carlo simulation results of a capacity constrained Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) model. The key modelling feature is that individuals are limited in the number of acquaintances that they can interact with, thereby constraining disease transmission to an infectious subnetwork of the original social network. While increased social distancing always reduces the spread of an infectious disease, the magnitude varies greatly depending on the topology of the network. Our results also reveal the importance of coordinating social distancing policies at the global level. In particular, the public health benefits from social distancing to a group (e.g., a country) may be completely undone if that group maintains connections with outside groups that are not following suit

Social distancing strategies against disease spreading

The recurrent infectious diseases and their increasing impact on the society has promoted the study of strategies to slow down the epidemic spreading. In this review we outline the applications of percolation theory to describe strategies against epidemic spreading on complex networks. We give a general outlook of the relation between link percolation and the susceptible-infected-recovered model, and introduce the node void percolation process to describe the dilution of the network composed by healthy individual, $i.e$, the network that sustain the functionality of a society. Then, we survey two strategies: the quenched disorder strategy where an heterogeneous distribution of contact intensities is induced in society, and the intermittent social distancing strategy where health individuals are persuaded to avoid contact with their neighbors for intermittent periods of time. Using percolation tools, we show that both strategies may halt the epidemic spreading. Finally, we discuss the role of the transmissibility, $i.e$, the effective probability to transmit a disease, on the performance of the strategies to slow down the epidemic spreading.Comment: to be published in "Perspectives and Challenges in Statistical Physics and Complex Systems for the Next Decade", Word Scientific Pres

Knowledge of Fatwa, Coronavirus, and Family Factors towards Policies of Social Distancing

This study aims to determine the effect of knowledge of fatwa, the knowledge of coronavirus disease, and family factors on student compliance with social distancing policies to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in Indonesia. This study was quantitative and the data were collected through questionnaires distributed via google forms. The data were collected from 426 respondents who were students of private and public Universities in Indonesia. The tool of analysis used in this study was the Partial Least Square (PLS) method, a variance-based structural equation analysis (SEM) that can simultaneously perform the measurement and structural model testing. The study found that there was a significant influence of the family factors on the compliance of students with social distancing policies. While there was no significant influence of the knowledge of fatwa and Covid-19 variables on student compliance with social distancing. The results of this study contribute to enriching the discourse of the role of religious and social factors on student compliance with social distancing policy to reduce the spread of Covid-1

Equilibrium Social Distancing

This paper presents an economic model of an epidemic in which susceptible individuals may engage in costly social distancing in order to avoid becoming infected. Infected individuals eventually recover and acquire immunity, thereby ceasing to be a source of infection to others. Under non-cooperative and forward-looking decision making, equilibrium social distancing arises endogenously around the peak of the epidemic, when disease prevalence reaches a critical threshold determined by preferences. Spontaneous, uncoordinated social distancing thus acts to flatten the curve of the epidemic by reducing peak prevalence. In equilibrium, social distancing stops once herd immunity sets in, but acts to extend the duration of the epidemic beyond the benchmark of a non-behavioral epidemiological model. Comparative statics with respect to the model parameters indicate that the curve becomes flatter (i) the more infectious the disease is and (ii) the more severe the health consequences of the disease are for the individuals

Motivating social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic: An online experiment. ESRI Working Paper No. 658 April 2020

Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic will save lives. We tested communication strategies to promote social distancing via an online experiment (N = 500) commissioned by Ireland’s Department of Health. A control group saw a current informational poster. Two treatment groups saw similar posters with messages that highlighted: (i) the risk of transmission to identifiable persons vulnerable to COVID-19; (ii) the exponential nature of transmission. We then measured judgements of behaviours previously identified by focus groups as “marginal” (meaning that people were not sure whether they were advisable, such meeting others outdoors, or visiting parents). We recorded intention to undertake behaviours and stated acceptability of behaviours. Our hypotheses, that both treatments would increase participants’ caution about marginal behaviours, were preregistered (i.e. lodged with an international organisation for open science before data collection). Results confirmed the hypotheses. The findings suggest that the thought of infecting vulnerable people or large numbers of people can motivate social distancing. This has implications for communications strategies. The stud

Social [Media] Distancing

This article examines the role of digital ethnographic methods in an emerging research landscape struck by COVID-19, whereby more traditional anthropological methods have been rendered impossible due to social distancing restrictions. It argues that while anthropology has long privileged physical proximity and presence as a central tenet of ethnographic method, digital methods can also afford a certain sense of social distance, which in fact can be beneficial to the research process. It draws upon experiences of conducting fifteen months of fieldwork both online and offline amongst marginalised groups in Cuba and its diaspora in Miami to reveal the ways in which digital distance can level the relationship between researcher and researched, and ultimately lead to a more ethical way of carrying out fieldwork amongst vulnerable communities