Intergenerational contacts and Covid-19 spread: Omnipresent grannies or bowling together?

Abstract

Many scientists are currently contributing research on SARS-CoV2, with social scientists focusing on demographic and behavioral aspects when it comes to the diffusion of the virus. Recent publications include valid contributions about the importance of population’s demographic composition to understand country-differences in fatalities, and some speculations about the origins of different pace and patterns of diffusion. Among them the idea that intergenerational contacts would contribute to explain the fast spread and high fatality among the elderly population in some countries. We argument that in order to contribute to the scientific knowledge speculation is not enough and acknowledge that in the absence of solid, comparable data it is difficult to bring these ideas to an empirical test. Further, we present a simulation experiment shedding serious doubts on the importance of intergenerational contacts to spread the virus on the elderly population but underlining, instead, the importance of the high connectedness within the elderly population. That southern Europeans are not bowling alone seems to be more relevant to explain high diffusion among elderly than their contact to their (grand-)children.

Intergenerational Residence Patterns and Covid-19 Fatalities in the EU and the Us

“…It could be that countries with cultures that encourage sociability also have higher rates of intergenerational co-residence. This interpretation is reinforced by Albertini et al's (2020) simulation experiments suggesting that high intergenerational connectedness alone is not sufficient to rapidly contaminate a large fraction of the elderly, and thus cause high fatalities. Only when they introduce social connectedness among the elderly do they find that a virus infects large fractions of the elderly.…”

Reply to Dowd et al.: Dangerous to overemphasize the importance of specific COVID-19 risk factors based on (unadjusted) macro-level analyses

“…This is confirmed by a recent study accounting for timing of epidemic onset and some confounders (5). Also, IR should be analyzed together with other types of relationships (6).…”

Elevated Jewish Mortality from Coronavirus in England and Wales: An Epidemiological and Demographic Detective Story

“…Close contact in the context of communal activities, both ritual and social, could lead to greater prevalence of infection in the Jewish community. The hypothesis connecting social and religious involvement to greater exposure to coronavirus has been discussed in the context of the European societies (Albertini et al 2020;Laliotis and Minos 2020;Oksanen et al 2020). The arithmetical necessity of a greater prevalence of infection is more sick people, and the result of more sick people is more deaths-all other things (socio-economic situation, etc.)…”