Covid and social distancing with a heterogenous population.

Motivated by the Covid-19 epidemic, we build a SIR model with private decisions on social distancing and population heterogeneity in terms of infection-induced fatality rates, and calibrate it to UK data to understand the quantitative importance of these assumptions. Compared to our model, the calibrated benchmark version with constant mean contact rate significantly over-predicts the mean contact rate, the death toll, herd immunity and prevalence peak. Instead, the calibrated counterfactual version with endogenous social distancing but no heterogeneity massively under-predicts these statistics. We use our calibrated model to understand how the impact of mitigating policies on the epidemic may depend on the

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© The Author(s) 2021.