Matt Wascher
Case Western Reserve University
Title
The effects of individual-level behavioral responses on SIS epidemic persistence
Abstract
The contact process (SIS epidemic model) has long been studied as a model for the spread of infectious disease through a population. One important question concerns the long-term behavior of the epidemic--does it result in a large outbreak, or does the infection die out quickly? There is a large literature on the effects of the underlying population structure on this long-term behavior. However, the role of individual-level behavioral responses to the epidemic is less studied. In this talk, I will introduce the contact process, some key ideas used to analyze it, and a few notable results. I will then discuss my recent work on modified versions of the contact process that include individual-level behavioral responses to the epidemic. I will present some results on how individual-level behavioral responses can influence the long-term behavior of an epidemic and discuss why analyzing these models is mathematically challenging.
