DIMACS Working Group on Modeling Social Responses to
Bio-terrorism Involving Infectious Agents
May 29 - 30, 2003
DIMACS Center, CoRE Building, Rutgers University
- Organizers:
- John Glasser, CDC, jwg3@cdc.gov
- Ellis McKenzie, NIH, McKenzel@mail.nih.gov
- Fred Roberts, Rutgers University, froberts@dimacs.rutgers.edu
Presented under the auspices of the
Special Focus on Computational and Mathematical Epidemiology.
Models of infectious-disease epidemiology generally assume a fixed
social landscape, in which the public consists of passive bystanders
and rational actors who comply with health authorities. It is not
clear how well this assumption applies to epidemics of any dread
disease, much less ones following terrorist attacks, or the extent to
which its validity depends on effective communication by authorities
and cooperating media. Some analogies (e.g., Three Mile Island, AIDS
or West Nile virus) suggest that episodes of mass panic or hysteria
would be rare and localized, while actions based on perceived
self-interest (e.g., evacuation, queries from the worried-well,
antibiotic stockpiling) would be widespread. Acts of spontaneous
altruism and mutual aid, as well as criminal opportunism and civil
disruption, would also occur. Insofar as changes in social behavior
under stress affect the success of medical and public-health
interventions, models used to design them would be improved by
incorporating relevant social dimensions. The absence of formalized
models of social behavior may help to explain the absence of social
phenomena in models of infectious diseases or public responses to
disease outbreaks. It could be that the inclusion of such phenomena
is an elusive goal, however worthy. Nonetheless, this meeting will
bring social-science experts together with infectious-disease modelers
to explore the development of inter-disciplinary methods appropriate
to this task.
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Document last modified on February 11, 2003.