The Complex Interplay Between Risk Tolerance and the Spread of Infectious Diseases

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nguyen, Maximilian, Freedman, Ari, Cheung, Matthew, Saad-Roy, Chadi, Espinoza, Baltazar, Grenfell, Bryan, Levin, Simon
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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_version_ 1866910512524034048
author Nguyen, Maximilian
Freedman, Ari
Cheung, Matthew
Saad-Roy, Chadi
Espinoza, Baltazar
Grenfell, Bryan
Levin, Simon
author_facet Nguyen, Maximilian
Freedman, Ari
Cheung, Matthew
Saad-Roy, Chadi
Espinoza, Baltazar
Grenfell, Bryan
Levin, Simon
contents 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 population with regards to risk tolerance. The interplay between behavior and epidemiology leads to a rich set of possible epidemic dynamics. Depending on the behavioral composition of the population, we find that increasing heterogeneity in risk tolerance can either increase or decrease the epidemic size. We find that multiple waves of infection can arise due to the interplay between transmission and behavior, even without the replenishment of susceptibles. We find that increasing protective mechanisms such as the effectiveness of interventions, the number of risk-averse people in the population, and the duration of intervention usage reduces the epidemic overshoot. When the protection is pushed past a critical threshold, the epidemic dynamics enter an underdamped regime where the epidemic size exactly equals the herd immunity threshold. Lastly, we can find regimes where epidemic size does not monotonically decrease with a population that becomes increasingly risk-averse.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_03376
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Complex Interplay Between Risk Tolerance and the Spread of Infectious Diseases
Nguyen, Maximilian
Freedman, Ari
Cheung, Matthew
Saad-Roy, Chadi
Espinoza, Baltazar
Grenfell, Bryan
Levin, Simon
Physics and Society
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Populations and Evolution
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 population with regards to risk tolerance. The interplay between behavior and epidemiology leads to a rich set of possible epidemic dynamics. Depending on the behavioral composition of the population, we find that increasing heterogeneity in risk tolerance can either increase or decrease the epidemic size. We find that multiple waves of infection can arise due to the interplay between transmission and behavior, even without the replenishment of susceptibles. We find that increasing protective mechanisms such as the effectiveness of interventions, the number of risk-averse people in the population, and the duration of intervention usage reduces the epidemic overshoot. When the protection is pushed past a critical threshold, the epidemic dynamics enter an underdamped regime where the epidemic size exactly equals the herd immunity threshold. Lastly, we can find regimes where epidemic size does not monotonically decrease with a population that becomes increasingly risk-averse.
title The Complex Interplay Between Risk Tolerance and the Spread of Infectious Diseases
topic Physics and Society
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Populations and Evolution
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.03376