Diminishing Marginal Benefit of Social Distancing in Balancing COVID-19 Medical Demand-to-Supply

Liu, Pai; Beeler, Payton; Chakrabarty, Rajan K

Social distancing has been adopted as a non-pharmaceutical intervention to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from overwhelming the medical resources across the United States (US). The catastrophic socio-economic impacts of this intervention could outweigh its benefits if the timing and duration of implementation are left uncontrolled and ill-strategized. Here we investigate the dynamics of social distancing on age-stratified US population and benchmark its effectiveness in reducing the burden on hospital and ICU beds. Our findings highlight the diminishing marginal benefit of social distancing, characterized by a linear decrease in medical demands against an exponentially increasing social distancing duration. We determine an optimal intermittent social-to-no-distancing ratio of 5:1 corresponding to ~80% reduction in healthcare demands; beyond this ratio, benefit of social distancing diminishes to a negligible level. COVID-19 Medical Forecast: https://eece.wustl.edu/chakrabarty-group/covid/