Incorporating fear (un)learning mechanisms in infectious disease modelling
department or school: Science, Irving K. Barber Faculty of (Okanagan)
department or school: Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, Department of (Okanagan)
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCO
creator: Kaur, Avneet
issued: 2024-04-08T17:47:13Z
issued: 2024
related degree: Master of Science - MSc
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Effective management of epidemics requires not only modeling the disease itself but also the fear response of the population to both the disease and the vaccine. Risk perceptions of the disease may drive fear of disease in the population, thus encouraging people to adopt prophylaxis. On the other hand, negative thoughts about vaccines may drive fear of vaccines in the population, thus making some people vaccine hesitant. Since these fear responses affect population behaviour and thus disease transmission rate, fear responses in turn influence the disease trajectory. In this thesis, we investigate an existing model of disease transmission that considers fear of disease and fear of vaccine as contagions that occur alongside the usual contagion of the disease. The mechanisms of fear acquisition and loss are rooted in human behavioural science. We analyse this model to determine the conditions under which each of the contagions (disease, fear of disease, or fear of vaccine) initially grows the fastest. We then analytically investigate a reduced version of the full model with just the fear of disease (i.e., no vaccine or fear of vaccine). We consider this reduced model in two scenarios, one where fear is transmitted at a rate slower than that of the disease, and the other where the two transmission rates are comparable. In the former scenario, we show that behavioural change has little to no effect on the disease dynamics, but in the latter case, we observe that sufficient behavioural intervention can suppress the epidemic yielding bifurcations in final epidemic size, the number of infection waves, and their relative peak size. In both scenarios, we observe that the disease-fearful population may retain fear of disease even after the outbreak is over. Finally, we propose an extension to the full model by adding a compartment for the population that is simultaneously fearful of both the disease and the vaccine. Analysis of the modified model gives us insights into the ric…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/87703
note: INCORPORATING FEAR (UN)LEARNING MECHANISMS ININFECTIOUS DISEASE MODELLINGbyAvneet KaurB.Sc. (Honours) Physics, University of Delhi (India), 2021A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OFTHE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OFMASTER OF SCIENCEinTHE COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES(Mathematics)THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA(Okanagan)April 2024© Avneet Kaur, 2024The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommendto the College of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled:INCORPORATING FEAR (UN)LEARNING MECHANISMS ININFECTIOUS DISEASE MODELLINGsubmitted by Avneet Kaur in partial fulfilment of the requirements of thedegree of Master of ScienceExamining Committee:Prof. Rebecca Tyson, Irving K. Barber Faculty of ScienceSupervisorDr. Iain Moyles, York UniversityCo-SupervisorDr. Bert Baumgaertner, University of IdahoSupervisory Committee MemberDr. Ifeoma Adaji, Irving K. Barber Faculty of ScienceSupervisory Committee MemberDr. Daniel Coombs, University of British Columbia - VancouverUniversity ExamineriiAbstractEffective management of epidemics requires not only modeling the dis-ease itself but also the fear response of the population to both the diseaseand the vaccine. Risk perceptions of the disease may drive fear of diseasein the population, thus encouraging people to adopt prophylaxis. On theother hand, negative thoughts about vaccines may drive fear of vaccines inthe population, thus making some people vaccine hesitant. Since these fearresponses affect population behaviour and thus disease transmission rate,fear responses in turn influence the disease trajectory.In this thesis, we investigate an existing model of disease transmissionthat considers fear of disease and fear of vaccine as contagions that occuralongside the usual contagion of the disease. The mechanisms of fear ac-quisition and loss are rooted in human behavioural science. We analysethis model to determine the conditions under which each of the contagions(disease, fear of disease, or f…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2024-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0441007
language: eng
degree discipline: Mathematics
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Tyson, Rebecca
contributor: Moyles, Iain
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87703