Complex dynamics induced by delayed adaptive behavior during epidemics

Ronan F. Arthur; James H. Jones; Matthew H. Bonds; Marcus W. Feldman

Despite these challenges, modelers have adopted a variety of strategies to investigate the importance of behavior (see Funk et al., 2010 [2] for a general review). An early expansion of the Kermack-McKendrick Susceptible-Infectious-Removed (SIR) model simply allowed the transmission parameter (β) to be a negative function of the number infected, effectively introducing an intrinsic negative feedback to the infected class that regulates the disease [14] . Modelers have used a variety of tools, including agent-based modeling [15] , network structures for the replacement of central nodes when sick [16] or for behavior change as a social contagion process [17] , game theoretic descriptions of rational choice under changing incentives as with vaccination [4, 11, 18] , branching process for heterogeneous agents and the effect of behavior during the West Africa Ebola epidemic in 2014 [19] , and adaptive network-structured sexual behavior that can produce oscillatory dynamics [20] .