ArticleBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2014
Transmissibility of the Ice Bucket Challenge among globally influential celebrities: retrospective cohort study.
Article in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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4 citing papers in PubMed.
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
objectivesTo estimate the transmissibility of the Ice Bucket Challenge among globally influential celebrities and to identify associated risk factors.
designRetrospective cohort study.
settingSocial media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).
participantsDavid Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Homer Simpson, and Kermit the Frog were defined as index cases. We included contacts up to the fifth generation seeded from each index case and enrolled a total of 99 participants into the cohort.
main outcome measuresBasic reproduction number R0, serial interval of accepting the challenge, and odds ratios of associated risk factors based on fully observed nomination chains; R0 is a measure of transmissibility and is defined as the number of secondary cases generated by a single index in a fully susceptible population. Serial interval is the duration between onset of a primary case and onset of its secondary cases.
resultsBased on the empirical data and assuming a branching process we estimated a mean R0 of 1.43 (95% confidence interval 1.23 to 1.65) and a mean serial interval for accepting the challenge of 2.1 days (median 1 day). Higher log (base 10) net worth of the participants was positively associated with transmission (odds ratio 1.63, 95% confidence interval 1.06 to 2.50), adjusting for age and sex.
conclusionsThe Ice Bucket Challenge was moderately transmissible among a group of globally influential celebrities, in the range of the pandemic A/H1N1 2009 influenza. The challenge was more likely to be spread by richer celebrities, perhaps in part reflecting greater social influence.
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