An agent-based epidemic model REINA for COVID-19 to identify destructive policies

Jouni T Tuomisto; Juha Yrjölä; Mikko Kolehmainen; Juhani Bonsdorff; Jami Pekkanen; Tero Tikkanen

The other main approach assumes that the disease can (and must) be suppressed so that only a small number of patients shall exist in the population. Rather than relying on herd immunity like in mitigation, suppression has to be actively maintained by isolating infected people. Total eradication in any one country is impossible in practice as long as the disease is still common in other countries. The epidemic is kept under control by actively searching for all patients (including those without symptoms) and isolating them so that the infection chains are cut. This is called the suppression strategy, sometimes referred to as "the hammer and the dance" in mass media. The "hammer" refers to concerted initial actions, such as mobility restrictions and coronavirus testing to get the numbers of infected patients down, and the "dance" is a delicate balance of opening up the society and partially removing mobility restrictions while still maintaining the capacity to trace and isolate all patients (Pueyo, 2020) . The dance may continue for months or even years, until a treatment or vaccination has been developed.