Brookings: Experts - Derek Cummings

Coupled Contagion Dynamics of Fear and Disease: Mathematical and Computational Explorations

Derek Cummings, Joshua M. Epstein, Ross A. Hammond and Jon Parker — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:46:20 -0500

Published version of the CSED October 2007 Working Paper

ABSTRACT

Background

In classical mathematical epidemiology, individuals do not adapt their contact behavior during epidemics. They do not endogenously engage, for example, in social distancing based on fear. Yet, adaptive behavior is well-documented in true epidemics. We explore the effect of including such behavior in models of epidemic dynamics.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Using both nonlinear dynamical systems and agent-based computation, we model two interacting contagion processes: one of disease and one of fear of the disease. Individuals can “contract” fear through contact with individuals who are infected with the disease (the sick), infected with fear only (the scared), and infected with both fear and disease (the sick and scared). Scared individuals–whether sick or not–may remove themselves from circulation with some probability, which affects the contact dynamic, and thus the disease epidemic proper. If we allow individuals to recover from fear and return to circulation, the coupled dynamics become quite rich, and can include multiple waves of infection. We also study flight as a behavioral response.

Conclusions/Significance

In a spatially extended setting, even relatively small levels of fear-inspired flight can have a dramatic impact on spatio-temporal epidemic dynamics. Self-isolation and spatial flight are only two of many possible actions that fear-infected individuals may take. Our main point is that behavioral adaptation of some sort must be considered.”

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Publication: PLoS One Journal

Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror : An Individual-Based Computational Approach

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2004 55pp.

In the United States, routine smallpox vaccination ended in 1972. The level of immunity remaining in the U.S. population is uncertain, but is generally assumed to be quite low. Smallpox is a deadly and infectious pathogen with a fatality rate of 30 percent. If smallpox were successfully deployed as an agent of bioterrorism today, the public health and economic consequences could be devastating.

Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror describes the scientific results and policy implications of a simulation of a smallpox epidemic in a two-town county. The model was developed by an interdisicplinary team from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Brookings Institution Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, employing agent-based and other advanced computational techniques. Such models are playing a critical role in the crafting of a national strategy for the containment of smallpox by providing public health policymakers with a variety of novel and feasible approaches to vaccination and isolation under different circumstances. The extension of these techniques to the containment of emerging pathogens, such as SARS, is discussed.

About the Authors:
Joshua M. Epstein and Shubha Chakravarty are with the Brookings Institution. Derek A. T. Cummings, Ramesh M. Singha, and Donald S. Burke are with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Derek Cummings

Donald S. Burke

Joshua M. Epstein

Ramesh M. Singa

Shubha Chakravarty

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Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror: An Individual-Based Computational Approach

Sun, 01 Dec 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Abstract

An individual-based computational model of smallpox epidemics in a two-town county is presented and used to develop strategies for bioterror containment. A powerful and feasible combination of preemptive and reactive vaccination and isolation strategies is developed which achieves epidemic quenching while minimizing risks of adverse side effects. Calibration of the model to historical data is described. Various model extensions and applications to other public health problems are noted.

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Authors

Derek Cummings
Donald S. Burke
Joshua M. Epstein
Ramesh M. Singa
Shubha Chakravarty