Why Individual Behavior Is Key to the Spread of Viruses Such as Covid-19

摘要

Diseases are spread due to the behavior of people.One may have millions of differently behaving people. For simplicity, humankindis only considering the average behavior. However, this simplification can leadto results tremendously different from the exact solution in at least someapplications when non-linear differential equations are used. In this letter,we prove that the mistake is very big for the spread of infections likeCovid-19. Ten percent ignoring the rules can almost ruin the extremely carefulbehavior of the remaining ninety percent. This is totally different to mostbusiness situations where considering eighty percent is sufficient(“80-20-rule”). This may explain why the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic andthe impact of measures against it are hard to predict for decision makers.