Experts are saying the sustained drop in COVID infection rates is *not* because of the vaccines, but I think they are. The models say that we shouldn't be seeing a drop yet with our small proportion of vaccinated population. But these models don't consider the network structure.

The easiest-to-use SIR model assumes every individual in the infected population has an equal opportunity to infect every individual in the susceptible population. But in reality, most people have very few connections to those susceptible. But a small amount of us have a ton.

Social networks are known to have tree-like connectivity. Potential paths of transmission go through central nodes. Some of these central nodes are the essential and frontline workers that have been prioritized in the early vaccine rollout. We might be cutting off these paths.

I'm just looking for hope. Has anyone seen an analysis that explicitly uses a network-based SIR variant? I've seen ones with stratified populations, which is a step toward a network analysis. Am I wrong that the CDC models ignore network effects?