Standard epidemiological models predict that, in the absence of behavioral changes, an epidemic should continue to grow until herd immunity has been reached and the dynamic of the epidemic is determined by people's behavior. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been plenty of cases where the effective reproduction number of the pandemic underwent large fluctuations that, as far as we can tell, can't be explained by behavioral changes.
Have we been thinking about the pandemic…
Standard epidemiological models predict that, in the absence of behavioral changes, an epidemic should continue to grow until herd immunity has been reached and the dynamic of the epidemic is determined by people's behavior. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been plenty of cases where the effective reproduction number of the pandemic underwent large fluctuations that, as far as we can tell, can't be explained by behavioral changes.