Gun violence spreads like an infections disease, new study finds

Gun violence in Chicago spreads like an infectious disease — and now, researchers have figured out a way to predict who’s most likely get sick next.

With infectious diseases, predictions are fairly simple: The more relationships an individual has with sick people, the more likely he is to be infected. The longer it’s been since exposure, the less likely infection becomes.

Now, researchers at Harvard and Yale have adopted that same type of mathematical model to predict potential victims of gun violence in Chicago. In 63 percent of the shootings they studied, they found that social contagion played a key role. Their study was published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Read more...

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