Managing an Epidemic with Economic Costs and Population’s Non-Compliance in Mind

EasyChair Preprint 14907

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that managing interventions involves more than just preventing new infections. The government has to take into account e.g.\ economic losses resulting from increased countermeasures and the mood of the population into account as well. Unfortunately, up to now only very few epidemic models integrate such cross-domain effects.

The paper presents a compartmental epidemiological model enhanced by psychological aspects. These aspects may influence the behavior of the population in response to epidemic conditions and governmental actions. The model incorporates frictions for being more realistic. The assessment of the epidemic's economic impact takes the incapacitated workforce due to both illness and lockdown regulations into account. The reproduction of fundamental economical and psychological effects occurring in an epidemics situation validates the chosen modeling approach.

Due to the limited availability of real-world data concerning psychology and economy, it was not possible to execute a model calibration. Thus, several model parameters have been chosen based on educated guesses. This restricts the usefulness of the model for quantitative predictive purposes. We conclude with a discussion and an outlook.

Keyphrases: Cross-domain effects, Economical effects, Managing interventions, compartmental model, epidemiological model, psychological effects

@booklet{EasyChair:14907,
  author    = {Zhandos Dauzhanov and Leonard Braun and João Rei and Ebru Gül and Christina Kuttler and Joachim Draeger},
  title     = {Managing an Epidemic with Economic Costs and Population’s Non-Compliance in Mind},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 14907},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2024}}