Modeling the relative risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection to inform risk-cost-benefit analyses of activities during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245381
• Publication Date: 2021-01-28T19:30:39Z
• Authors: John E. McCarthy; Barry D. Dewitt; Bob A. Dumas; Myles T. McCarthy
• Keywords: Pandemic; 2019-20 coronavirus outbreak; Betacoronavirus

Risk-cost-benefit analysis requires the enumeration of decision alternatives, their associated outcomes, and quantification uncertainty. Public private decision-making surrounding COVID-19 pandemic must contend with uncertainty about probability infection during activities involving groups people, in order to decide whether that activity is worth undertaking. We propose a model SARS-CoV-2 can produce estimates relative risk for diverse activities, so long as those meet list assumptions, including they do not last longer than one day (e.g., sporting events, flights, concerts), among possible routes (i.e., droplet, aerosol, fomite, direct contact) are independent. show how be used inform decisions facing governments industry, such opening stadiums or flying on airplanes; particular, it allows estimating ranking constituent components going through turnstile, sitting one’s seat) by infection, even when unknown uncertain. prove good approximation more refined which we assume infections come from series independent risks. A linearity assumption governing several potentially modifiable risks factors—such duration activity, density participants, infectiousness attendees—makes interpreting using straightforward, argue does without significantly diminishing reliability model.