Illness Spreading Via Holiday Contact
Article- https://www.inquirer.com/health/flu-how-to-keep-travelers-family-coworkers-from-making-you-sick-holidays-20191119.html
The number of cold and flu cases in America increase in late November and December every year in no small part because of the increased contact between people. As people flood public transport systems and family members and friends get together in large groups over large amounts of food, the number of opportunities for microbes to be exchanged inevitably increases. However, there are many ways in which people can mitigate the risk of getting sick while traveling and at gatherings. Hand-washing is easily the most effective method of mass infection prevention, but an inability to control others’ hygienic practices makes other methods like disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer, and anti-viral medication perhaps more reliable.
This article fits into what we’ve discussed in class because our network models of illness show how increased contact (k) increases the spread of disease. The article mentions that the retail and health-care sectors, where employees come into repeated contact with many different people, are the most susceptible to infection, just as our models show that increasing k makes epidemics spread faster and further. As the number of contacts increases, it is important that we do as much as we can to reduce the probability of infection (p) as much as possible through hand-washing, vaccination, and other health safeguards, a task made more difficult by weakening effect of cold weather on our immune systems increasing p compared to during the warmer months of the year.