We use detailed location data to show that contact rates in most U.S. cities are fat tailed, suggesting that the fat tails previously documented in a small number of case studies are widespread. We integrate these results into a stochastic compartmental model to show that COVID-19 impacts were also fat tailed for many large U.S. cities for several weeks in the spring and summer. Due to thresholds in epidemiological dynamics, fat-tailed impacts would have been more prevalent if not for the gradual increase in contact rates throughout the summer that made an outbreak more certain.
Quarantine fatigue thins fat-tailed coronavirus impacts in U.S. cities by making epidemics inevitable