Awareness-driven behavior changes can shift the shape of epidemics away from peaks and toward plateaus, shoulders, and oscillations

  1. Joshua S. Weitz
  2. Sang Woo Park
  3. Ceyhun Eksin
  4. Jonathan Dushoff

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Abstract

In contrast to predictions of conventional epidemic models, COVID-19 outbreak time series have highly asymmetric shapes, with cases and fatalities declining much more slowly than they rose. Here, we investigate how awareness-driven behavior modulates epidemic shape. We find that short-term awareness of fatalities leads to emergent plateaus, persistent shoulder-like dynamics, and lag-driven oscillations in an SEIR-like model. However, a joint analysis of fatalities and mobility data suggests that populations relaxed mobility restrictions prior to fatality peaks, in contrast to model predictions. We show that incorporating fatigue and long-term behavior change can explain this phenomenon, shed light on when post-peak dynamics are likely to lead to a resurgence of cases or to sustained declines, and inform public health campaigns to control COVID-19.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.03.20089524: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

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    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

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    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1073/pnas.2009911117
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.03.20089524 on medRxiv