How social distancing as clusters will help

Strategic social distancing will help slow the outbreak while allowing people to return to some degree of normalcy, researchers say

ESTABLISHED PATTERNS: Demography researchers say usually, people interact with largely same sets of people. Some contact, however, may be in far-away clusters

CUTTING LONG-RANGE TIES: Limiting some of these far-away interactions can slow the spread of the disease among groups, helping flatten the curve

ISOLATING GROUPS: Creating micro-communities by clustering common contacts even further can help keep some people away from being exposed to infections.

QUANTIFYING THE GAINS: The patterns reflect how breaking the chain of contact between different groups can help put people farther away in an infection chain. Not interacting with someone that a person who is out of their common contact network can help limit exposure to the virus