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Coupled Contagion Dynamics of Fear and Disease: Mathematical and Computational Explorations
by
Joshua M. Epstein
The Brookings Institution
Coauthors: Jon Parker, Derek Cummings, Ross A. Hammond
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 course of the disease epidemic proper. If we allow individuals to recover from fear and return to circulation, the coupled dynamics become quite rich, and include multiple waves of infection, such as occurred in the 1918 flu. We also study flight as a behavioral response. In a multi-patch setting, even relatively small levels of fear-inspired flight can have a dramatic impact on spatio-temporal dynamics. Both nonlilear differential equations and agent-based computational models are employed.
Date received: October 4, 2007
Copyright © 2007 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cavp-20.