Effects of weather-related social distancing on city-scale transmission of respiratory viruses

Michael L Jackson; Gregory R Hart; Denise J McCulloch; Amanda Adler; Elisabeth Brandstetter; Kairsten Fay; Peter Han; Kirsten Lacombe; Jover Lee; Thomas Sibley; Deborah A Nickerson; Mark Rieder; Lea Starita; Janet A Englund; Trevor Bedford; Helen Chu; Michael Famulare

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.02.20027599 doi: medRxiv preprint Modeling and simulation studies have been used to predict the impact of social distancing on the course of a hypothetical influenza pandemic (e.g. [11] [12] [13] [14] . Although there is heterogeneity in the specific form of social distancing modeled, most of the studies have assumed that social distancing measures are initiated early in the course of a pandemic. These studies consistently suggest that such social distancing can delay the timing and intensity of the pandemic peak, but with little impact on the final attack rate of the pandemic. Our observations support these findings. The extreme snowfall of February 2019 occurred early in the seasonal epidemics of influenza A/H3N2 and hMPV, and we estimate that the final attack rates of these viruses only decreased by 3% and the peaks only shifted by 18 or 15 days, respectively.