Read on Twitter
I think sexually transmitted infection epidemiologists/network modelers probably have a lot of insight here and about why social circles/bubbles are so complicated. /1 https://twitter.com/jhengstler/status/1287516065312829441
A lot of the challenges with these sorts of questions relate to networks and what individuals in these networks know about the other people in their networks. /2
This is an example of a network of romantic relationships in a high school ( https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/386272?journalCode=ajs). If you take the perspective of any individual, you might think you're only involved with one (or a handful) of other people in this social network. /3
But if you were to introduce an infection into this network, there's the potential for a pretty big outbreak. Key takeaway for #COVID19: the contacts of your contacts matter but you won't always know who they are. /4
In the context of schools, there's also the potential for teachers (or others) to act as 'bridges' between groups of students. Disrupting these bridges can have a big impact for reducing transmission by basically breaking up the network into smaller pieces, disrupting spread. /6
What does this mean for schools? Recognizing that contacts between students, educators, and other staff are only a small piece of the total network, we need to: (i) do everything possible to reduce the risk that infection gets introduced into the network (low community spread) /6
and (ii) use physical distancing, cohorting, PPE, hand hygiene, etc. to further minimize risk of spread if infection is introduced. /end
