An increasing number of celebrities, politicians and athletes are testing positive for the new coronavirus. With all the fame and fortune and all the obligatory social events, networking and parties that come with it, it's no surprise that famous people are being disproportionately affected by the ongoing pandemic – according to science, that is.
Having such a wide social network and spending most of your time interacting with many people can come with a higher price in times of a public health crisis, experts say.
As human beings, we all spend a lot of our time networking, learning how to connect with others and building relationships throughout our whole lives. Starting from school, we learn that we should connect and interact with other people to have a richer social and professional life. Turns out that these two precious skills could be fatal in unexpected and dangerous situations like the coronavirus pandemic, serving the spread of the virus.
Celebrities' frequent traveling schedules, having more in-person interactions, mostly with other celebrities, have proven problematic in this case. “They are, in the language of network theory, highly connected nodes,” Carl Bergstrom, an evolutionary and theoretical biologist at the University of Washington, said.
Epidemiological research, which examined the spread of infectious diseases in networks, supports these concerns and points out that infection “occurs and peaks earlier in highly connected nodes relative to average nodes.”
On the other hand, a lot of people ignored the virus until Tom and Rita Hanks tested positive on March 10 and publicly called for self-isolation. Other famous artists tested positive and isolated themselves including, Idris Elba, Kristofer Hivju and Fatih Terim, accompanied by calls encouraging people to stay at home and to “take it seriously."
