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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 7: Focus Session: Self-Regulating and Learning Systems: from Neural to Social Networks
SOE 7.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 19, 2025, 10:00–10:15, H45
Societal self-regulation induces complex infection dynamics and chaos — Joel Wagner1,2, •Simon Bauer1, Sebastian Contreras1,2, Luk Fleddermann1,2, Ulrich Parlitz1,2, and Viola Priesemann1,2 — 1Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany — 2Institute for the Dynamics of Complex Systems, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Classically, endemic infectious diseases are expected to display relatively stable, predictable infection dynamics, like recurrent seasonal waves. However, if the human population reacts to high infection numbers by mitigating the spread of the disease, this delayed behavioural feedback loop can generate infection waves itself, driven by periodic mitigation and subsequent relaxation. We show that such behavioural reactions, together with a seasonal effect of comparable impact, can cause complex and unpredictable infection dynamics, including Arnold tongues, co-existing attractors, and chaos [1]. Importantly, these arise in epidemiologically relevant parameter regions where the costs associated to infections and mitigation are jointly minimised. By comparing our model to data, we find signs that COVID-19 was mitigated in a way that favoured complex infection dynamics.Our results challenge the intuition that endemic disease dynamics necessarily implies predictability and seasonal waves, and show the emergence of complex infection dynamics when humans optimise their reaction to increasing infection numbers.
[1] Wagner, J., et al. arXiv:2305.15427
Keywords: Disease dynamics; Self-regulation; Chaos