IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v540y2020ics0378437119317388.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Taking preventive measures against infections with a cost in static and dynamic single-group populations

Author

Listed:
  • Xu, C.
  • Hui, P.M.

Abstract

The options for agents susceptible to an infection of taking preventive measures with a cost or to expose themselves to an acceptable level of risk of being infected are incorporated into an epidemic model within a game theoretical framework. A susceptible agent decides on his action by assessing the risk posed by his neighborhood, the cost-to-benefit ratio c∕b and the infection probability. In a well-mixed population, the evolution and long time limit of the densities of infected and susceptible agents are studied for different values of the parameters, and the results can be described well by a set of dynamical equations in all cases. The epidemic model is also studied within a dynamical 1-group situation in a population where only agents who are simultaneously present in the common place can make contact. While the 1-group grows and fragments in time repeatedly, the infection profiles show different behavior: from a resurgent behavior following the 1-group dynamics to one that decouples from the grouping dynamics and everything in between. Formulating the co-evolving dynamics mathematically is a challenging task. We demonstrate the necessity of setting up separate sets of dynamical equations for the growing and fragmented stages. The work sheds light on the debate around whether vaccinations should be imposed and whether unvaccinated students should be allowed to go to school amid the recent measles outbreak, as well as on the proper mathematical formulation of co-evolving problems involving contacts among agents only in a popular place.

Suggested Citation

  • Xu, C. & Hui, P.M., 2020. "Taking preventive measures against infections with a cost in static and dynamic single-group populations," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 540(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:540:y:2020:i:c:s0378437119317388
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2019.123079
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437119317388
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2019.123079?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cui, Guang-Hai & Wang, Zhen & Li, Jun-Li & Jin, Xing & Zhang, Zhi-Wang, 2021. "Influence of precaution and dynamic post-indemnity based insurance policy on controlling the propagation of epidemic security risks in networks," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 392(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:540:y:2020:i:c:s0378437119317388. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.