To isolate or not to isolate: the impact of changing behavior on COVID-19 transmission
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Abstract
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 25 million cases and 800 thousand deaths worldwide to date. In early days of the pandemic, neither vaccines nor therapeutic drugs were available for this novel coronavirus. All measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are thus based on reducing contact between infected and susceptible individuals. Most of these measures such as quarantine and self-isolation require voluntary compliance by the population. However, humans may act in their (perceived) self-interest only.
Methods
We construct a mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission with quarantine and hospitalization coupled with a dynamic game model of adaptive human behavior. Susceptible and infected individuals adopt various behavioral strategies based on perceived prevalence and burden of the disease and sensitivity to isolation measures, and they evolve their strategies using a social learning algorithm (imitation dynamics).
Results
This results in complex interplay between the epidemiological model, which affects success of different strategies, and the game-theoretic behavioral model, which in turn affects the spread of the disease. We found that the second wave of the pandemic, which has been observed in the US, can be attributed to rational behavior of susceptible individuals, and that multiple waves of the pandemic are possible if the rate of social learning of infected individuals is sufficiently high.
Conclusions
To reduce the burden of the disease on the society, it is necessary to incentivize such altruistic behavior by infected individuals as voluntary self-isolation.
Article activity feed
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.30.20184804: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Proscriptive guidelines and current policies often fail to recognize that certain populations are less able or willing to stay at home due to compromised living situations, financial limitations, or precarious economic opportunities. Further approaches should consider how individual behaviors vary across key socioecomic and demographic …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.30.20184804: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Proscriptive guidelines and current policies often fail to recognize that certain populations are less able or willing to stay at home due to compromised living situations, financial limitations, or precarious economic opportunities. Further approaches should consider how individual behaviors vary across key socioecomic and demographic population characteristics. 3.2 Conclusions: The goal of this study was to provide insight into possible effects of human behavior on non-pharmaceutical intervention strategies (such as partial lock-down and social isolation) aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19. Standard epidemiological models neglect human behavior, yet it is a major factor for studying COVID-19 transmission while there are no known pharmaceutical solutions. We showed that in certain circumstances rational human behavior may result in multiple waves of the pandemic, which persist for a long period of time. Finally. we summarize our results according to whether human behavior is static or dynamic driven by public perception of risk of the infection and sensitivity to isolation measures. Overall, our results emphasize the importance of diverse steps that could be implemented that would incentivize and support responsible behavior by individuals. This might involve positive reinforcement, such as subsidies and economic support, or negative consequences, such as penalties and fines for those not obeying and following appropriate behavioral norms.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- 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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