Overnighting – staying overnight at someone else’s home or having them stay overnight at your place -- is widespread throughout the epidemic, over half American adults had at least one overnight

Kelley, Jonathan, MDR Evans, and Sarah Kelley. 2020. “Let's Spend the Night Togheter: A Challenge for Medically Optimal Coronavirus Social Distancing Policies.” SocArXiv. October 29. doi:10.31235/osf.io/tsqyb

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1323546443282554880

Abstract: Public health efforts aiming to slow the COVID-19 epidemic and protect the vulnerable by reducing interpersonal contact and increasing interpersonal physical distance have achieved considerable success. About three-quarters of Americans report following all the recommended practices. But there is an elephant in the room: Overnighting – staying overnight at someone else’s home or having them stay overnight at your place -- is rarely mentioned publicly. But we find that overnighting is widespread throughout the epidemic thus far. In the past month, over half American adults had at least one overnight guest and about the same number (but not always the same people) spent at least one night at somebody else's home. The consequences are striking: People who overnight are more than twice as likely to report having had COVID-19. Who overnights? Overnighting is much more common among young adults (over 60% for those 25-34) than among their seniors (dipping below 40% for those age 65 and over). Moreover, risk seekers overnight much more than otherwise-similar risk-averse peers. Data: International Social Science Survey, Round 21, Cohorts 1-7, collected April –September 2020, N=9,474. Methods: Descriptive statistics and OLS.