Pandemic panic : a network-based approach to predicting social response during a disease outbreak

Epidemic trajectories and associated social responses vary widely between populations, with severe reactions sometimes observed. When confronted with fatal or novel pathogens, people exhibit a variety of behaviors from anxiety to hoarding of medical supplies, overwhelming medical infrastructure and rioting. We developed a coupled network approach to understanding and predicting social response to disease spread. We couple the disease spread and panic spread processes and model them through local interactions between agents. The behavioral contagion process depends on the prevalence of the disease, its perceived risk and a global media signal. We verify the model by analyzing the spread of disease and social response during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak in Mexico City, the 2003 SARS and 2009 H1N1 outbreaks in Hong Kong and the 2012-2013 Boston influenza season, accurately predicting population-level behavior. The effect of interventions on the disease spread and social response is explored, and we implement an optimization study to determine the least cost intervention, taking into account the costs of the disease itself, the intervention and the social response. We show that the optimal strategy is dependent upon the relative costs assigned to infection with the disease, intervention and social response, as well as the perceived risk of infection. This kind of empirically validated model is critical to exploring strategies for public health intervention, increasing our ability to anticipate the response to infectious disease outbreaks.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Fast, Shannon M. (Shannon Marie)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Natasha Markuzon and Marta Gonzalez.

• Operations Research Center.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/91406

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/91406