Epidemic Forecast Follies
Physics and Society
2025-01-14 v1 Statistical Mechanics
Biological Physics
Abstract
We introduce a simple multiplicative model to describe the temporal behavior and the ultimate outcome of an epidemic. Our model accounts, in a minimalist way, for the competing influences of imposing public-health restrictions when the epidemic is severe, and relaxing restrictions when the epidemic is waning. Our primary results are that different instances of an epidemic with identical starting points have disparate outcomes and each epidemic temporal history is strongly fluctuating.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2309.13488,
title = {Epidemic Forecast Follies},
author = {P. L. Krapivsky and S. Redner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.13488},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
7 pages, 4 figures