There has been one study that looked at behaviour after the flu vaccine that suggests that the virus may also change our behaviour to spread [1,2].

Given the wide amount of testing and monitoring of people with Covid-19 we have the ability to design a study to see if this Coronavirus makes us more sociable in the asymptomatic stage. One potential is that people who are infected may be more likely to break quarantine rules, another idea is that by noticing when you are feeling a new urge to be more sociable than normal, perhaps that might be a common pre-symptom. And perhaps the virus makes no change on human behaviour. Lets find out.

So, how would you do it? Online survey? In person interviews?

I can imagine that people may have considerable guilt about socialising or going out when they were infectious but feeling well and may not tell the truth. Memories may be vague, and lockdowns might well complicate things. Could it only be done after the fact, or before? Maybe social media or Tinder data could be used?

How could we control for this?

[1] Reiber, C., E.C. Shattuck, S. Fiore, V. David, P. van Goozen, and J. Moore. 2010. Change in human social behavior in response to a common vaccine. Annals of Epidemiology 20(10): 729-733. DOI: 10.1016/j.annepidem.2010.06.014

[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201801/does-the-flu-trick-people-being-sociable