Related papers: Infection arbitrage
As infectious disease outbreaks emerge, public health agencies often enact vaccination and social distancing measures to slow transmission. Their success depends on not only strategies and resources, but also public adherence. Individual…
Epidemics of infectious diseases posing a serious risk to human health have occurred throughout history. During recent epidemics there has been much debate about policy, including how and when to impose restrictions on behaviour.…
This article considers the minimization of the total number of infected individuals over the course of an epidemic in which the rate of infectious contacts can be reduced by time-dependent nonpharmaceutical interventions. The societal and…
We study equilibrium distancing during epidemics. Distancing reduces the individual's probability of getting infected but comes at a cost. It creates a single-peaked epidemic, flattens the curve and decreases the size of the epidemic. We…
During an epidemic control, the containment of the disease is usually achieved through increasing devoted resource to shorten the duration of infectiousness. However, the impact of this resource expenditure has not been studied…
Mitigation measures are essential for controlling the spread of infectious diseases during pandemics and epidemics, but they impose considerable societal, individual, and economic costs. We developed a general optimization framework to…
This paper considers a simple model where a social planner can influence the spread-intensity of an infection wave, and, consequently, also the economic activity and population health, through a single parameter. Population health is…
The design of an efficient curing policy, able to stem an epidemic process at an affordable cost, has to account for the structure of the population contact network supporting the contagious process. Thus, we tackle the problem of…
An epidemic spreading in a network calls for a decision on the part of the network members: They should decide whether to protect themselves or not. Their decision depends on the trade-off between their perceived risk of being infected and…
In this study, we explore the dynamic interplay between the timing of vaccination campaigns and the trajectory of disease spread in a population. Through comprehensive data analysis and modeling, we have uncovered a counter-intuitive…
Resource support between individuals is of particular importance in controlling or mitigating epidemic spreading, especially during pandemics. Whereas there remains the question of how we can protect ourselves from being infected while…
The decision of whether or not to vaccinate is a complex one. It involves the contribution both to a social good -- herd immunity -- and to one's own well being. It is informed by social influence, personal experience, education, and mass…
Most vaccines require multiple doses, the first to induce recognition and antibody production and subsequent doses to boost the primary response and achieve optimal protection. We show that properly prioritizing the administration of first…
Risk-driven behavior provides a feedback mechanism through which individuals both shape and are collectively affected by an epidemic. We introduce a general and flexible compartmental model to study the effect of heterogeneity in the…
We consider a model for an epidemic in a population that occupies geographically distinct locations. The disease is spread within subpopulations by contacts between infective and susceptible individuals, and is spread between subpopulations…
We analyze an optimal control version of a simple SIRS epidemiology model. The policy maker can adopt policies to diminish the contact rate between infected and susceptible individuals, at a specific economic cost. The arrival of a vaccine…
Advances in mathematical epidemiology have led to a better understanding of the risks posed by epidemic spreading and informed strategies to contain disease spread. However, a challenge that has been overlooked is that, as a disease becomes…
In the absence of drugs and vaccines, policymakers use non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing to decrease rates of disease-causing contact, with the aim of reducing or delaying the epidemic peak. These measures carry…
Faced with a dangerous epidemic humans will spontaneously social distance to reduce their risk of infection at a socio-economic cost. Compartmentalised epidemic models have been extended to include this endogenous decision making:…
This paper combines a canonical epidemiology model of disease dynamics with government policy of lockdown and testing, and agents' decision to social distance in order to avoid getting infected. The model is calibrated with data on deaths…