Abstract:
Avoiding physical contact is regarded as one of the safest and most advisable strategies to follow to reduce pathogen spread. The flip side of this approach is that a lack of social interactions may negatively affect other dimensions of health, like induction of immunosuppressive anxiety and depression or preventing interactions of importance with a diversity of microbes, which may be necessary to train our immune system or to maintain its normal levels of activity. These may in turn negatively affect a population\'s susceptibility to infection and the incidence of severe disease. We suggest that future pandemic modelling may benefit from relying on \'SIR+ models\': epidemiological models extended to account for the benefits of social interactions that affect immune resilience. We develop an SIR+ model and discuss which specific interventions may be more effective in balancing the trade-off between minimizing pathogen spread and maximizing other interaction-dependent health benefits. Our SIR+ model reflects the idea that health is not just the mere absence of disease, but rather a state of physical, mental and social well-being that can also be dependent on the same social connections that allow pathogen spread, and the modelling of public health interventions for future pandemics should account for this multidimensionality.
摘要:
避免身体接触被认为是减少病原体传播的最安全和最明智的策略之一。这种方法的另一面是,缺乏社交互动可能会对健康的其他方面产生负面影响,比如诱导免疫抑制性焦虑和抑郁或阻止与多种微生物的重要相互作用,这可能是训练我们的免疫系统或维持其正常活动水平所必需的。这些可能反过来对人群的感染易感性和严重疾病的发病率产生负面影响。我们建议,未来的大流行模型可能会受益于“SIR模型”:流行病学模型扩展到考虑影响免疫韧性的社会互动的好处。我们开发了一个SIR模型,并讨论了哪些具体干预措施可能更有效地平衡了最大限度地减少病原体传播和最大化其他依赖相互作用的健康益处之间的权衡。我们的SIR+模型反映了健康不仅仅是没有疾病,而是一种身体状态,精神和社会福祉也可以依赖于允许病原体传播的相同的社会关系,未来大流行的公共卫生干预措施的建模应考虑到这种多维度。