Watch a Real-Time Simulation of How Well Social Distancing at the Beach Actually Works to Contain COVID-19

When Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced the tentative reopening of Virginia Beach for Memorial Day, he warned antsy residents that, if they didn’t abide by new restrictions such as social distancing and limits on group activities to mitigate the risk of new COVID-19 infections, he wouldn’t hesitate to re-close the area. He’s not alone. Coastline municipalities around the country are now instituting or contemplating similar liberties. To test how feasible it is for public spaces to reopen to those restless from weeks of stay-at-home orders, we’ve built a simulation. It uses the real-world coordinates of a two-block stretch on the southern tip of Virginia Beach covering 4.4 acres of sandy respite along a 600-foot coastline, and runs a real-time computational experiment in which each digital person acts according a randomly assigned behavioral model. Each person is visualized as a circle with a six-foot diameter, meaning any time two circles overlap (and turn red), social distancing has been violated. Depending on where you place the slider at the top, a certain percentage of beachgoers in the simulation will rigorously try to observe social distancing while others will bend the rules by a few feet. In the default setting, 75% of the 200 simulated beachgoers aspire to maintain a minimum of a six-foot distance, while 25% are willing to fudge that distance down to between 3 and 5 feet. In this case, about 20% of our tiny friends head straight for t...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news