Related papers: Endogenous viral mutations, evolutionary selection…
Evolution of disease in a large population is a function of the top-down policy measures from a centralized planner, as well as the self-interested decisions (to be socially active) of individual agents in a large heterogeneous population.…
We study the problem of a policymaker who aims at taming the spread of an epidemic while minimizing its associated social costs. The main feature of our model lies in the fact that the disease's transmission rate is a diffusive stochastic…
We have learned to live with many potentially deadly viruses for which there is no vaccine, no immunity, and no cure. We do not live in constant fear of these viruses, instead, we have learned how to outsmart them and reduce the harm they…
The adaptive immune system engages in an arms race with evolving viruses, trying to generate new responses to viral strains that continually move away from the set of variants that have already elicited a functional immune response. In…
The theory of life history evolution provides a powerful framework to understand the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens in both epidemic and endemic situations. This framework, however, relies on the assumption that pathogen populations are…
The outbreak of mutant strains and vaccination behaviors have been the focus of recent epidemiological research, but most existing epidemic models failed to simultaneously capture viral mutation and consider the complexity and behavioral…
Although traditional models of epidemic spreading focus on the number of infected, susceptible and recovered individuals, a lot of attention has been devoted to integrate epidemic models with population genetics. Here we develop an…
In this paper we study intra-host viral adaptation by antigenic cooperation - a mechanism of immune escape that serves as an alternative to the standard mechanism of escape by continuous genomic diversification and allows to explain a…
The dynamics of epidemic spreading is often reduced to the single control parameter $R_0$, whose value, above or below unity, determines the state of the contagion. If, however, the pathogen evolves as it spreads, $R_0$ may change over…
We study how the interplay between the memory immune response and pathogen mutation affects epidemic dynamics in two related models. The first explicitly models pathogen mutation and individual memory immune responses, with contacted…
Pathogens drive changes in host immune systems that in turn exert pressure for pathogens to evolve. Quantifying and understanding this constant coevolutionary process has clear practical global health implications. Yet its relatively easier…
We introduce and analyze a within-host dynamical model of the coevolution between rapidly mutating pathogens and the adaptive immune response. Pathogen mutation and a homeostatic constraint on lymphocytes both play a role in allowing the…
Models are often employed to integrate knowledge about epidemics across scales and simulate disease dynamics. While these approaches have played a central role in studying the mechanics underlying epidemics, we lack ways to reliably predict…
Epidemic models study the spread of an undesired agent through a population, be it infectious diseases through a country, misinformation in online social media, or pests infesting a region. In combating these epidemics, we rely neither on…
One strategy for winning a coevolutionary struggle is to evolve rapidly. Most of the literature on host-pathogen coevolution focuses on this phenomenon, and looks for consequent evidence of coevolutionary arms races. An alternative…
Viruses constantly undergo mutations with genomic changes. The propagation of variants of viruses is an interesting problem. We perform numerical simulations of the microscopic epidemic model based on network theory for the spread of…
We introduce and discuss a minimal individual-based model for influenza dynamics. The model takes into account the effects of specific immunization against viral strains, but also infectivity randomness and the presence of a short-lived…
Due to modern transportation networks (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.) an epidemic in a given country or city may be triggered by the arrival of external infected agents. Posterior government quarantine policies are usually taken in order to…
In this paper, I study epidemic diffusion in a generalized spatial SEIRD model, where individuals are initially connected in a social or geographical network. As the virus spreads in the network, the structure of interactions between people…
Cooperation and competition between pathogens can alter the amount of individuals affected by a co-infection. Nonetheless, the evolution of the pathogens' behavior has been overlooked. Here, we consider a co-evolutionary model where the…