James Moody and colleagues’ NSF funded work on COVID-19 and disease transmission, featured in the New York Times on November 16, 2020
NSF funded COVID-19 research, “Developing Social Differentiation-respecting Disease Transmission Models” under the leadership of James Moody, Robert O. Keohane Professor of Sociology at Duke University and DUPRI scholar, Lisa Keister, Professor of Sociology at Duke, and Dana Pasquale, Postdoctoral Associate, Duke Department of Sociology, was recently featured in the New York Times.
“The perceived threat of the virus may also depend on how close someone is to a person who has died or suffered a long-term disability as a result of the virus. While about a third of Americans know someone who has died of Covid-19, only a small percentage can count a virus victim among their 20 closest contacts, according to a calculation by James Moody, director of the Network Analysis Center at Duke University.”
‘‘It’s the old joke about Facebook friends,” Dr. Moody said. “How many of them will help you move your couch? If you’re talking to a friend of a friend about someone who died, at that point it’s not impactful in the way that tends to shape people’s behavior.’”