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The relative power of individual distancing efforts and public policies to curb the COVID-19 epidemics

Lockdown curbs the COVID-19 epidemics but at huge costs. Public debates question its impact compared to reliance on individual responsibility. We study how rationally chosen self-protective behavior impacts the spread of the epidemics and interacts with policies. We first assess the value of lockdow...

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Autores principales: Aubert, Cécile, Augeraud-Véron, Emmanuelle
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8104446/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33961652
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250764
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author Aubert, Cécile
Augeraud-Véron, Emmanuelle
author_facet Aubert, Cécile
Augeraud-Véron, Emmanuelle
author_sort Aubert, Cécile
collection PubMed
description Lockdown curbs the COVID-19 epidemics but at huge costs. Public debates question its impact compared to reliance on individual responsibility. We study how rationally chosen self-protective behavior impacts the spread of the epidemics and interacts with policies. We first assess the value of lockdown in terms of mortality compared to a counterfactual scenario that incorporates self-protection efforts; and second, assess how individual behavior modify the epidemic dynamics when public regulations change. We couple an SLIAR model, that includes asymptomatic transmission, with utility maximization: Individuals trade off economic and wellbeing costs from physical distancing with a lower infection risk. Physical distancing effort depends on risk aversion, perceptions of the epidemics and average distancing effort in the population. Rational distancing effort is computed as a Nash Equilibrium. Equilibrium effort differs markedly from constant, stochastic or proportional contacts reduction. It adjusts to daily incidence of hospitalization in a way that creates a slightly decreasing plateau in epidemic prevalence. Calibration on French data shows that a business-as-usual benchmark yields an overestimation of the number of deaths by a factor of 10 compared to benchmarks with equilibrium efforts. However, lockdown saves nearly twice as many lives as individual efforts alone. Public policies post-lockdown have a limited impact as they partly crowd out individual efforts. Communication that increases risk salience is more effective.
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spelling pubmed-81044462021-05-18 The relative power of individual distancing efforts and public policies to curb the COVID-19 epidemics Aubert, Cécile Augeraud-Véron, Emmanuelle PLoS One Research Article Lockdown curbs the COVID-19 epidemics but at huge costs. Public debates question its impact compared to reliance on individual responsibility. We study how rationally chosen self-protective behavior impacts the spread of the epidemics and interacts with policies. We first assess the value of lockdown in terms of mortality compared to a counterfactual scenario that incorporates self-protection efforts; and second, assess how individual behavior modify the epidemic dynamics when public regulations change. We couple an SLIAR model, that includes asymptomatic transmission, with utility maximization: Individuals trade off economic and wellbeing costs from physical distancing with a lower infection risk. Physical distancing effort depends on risk aversion, perceptions of the epidemics and average distancing effort in the population. Rational distancing effort is computed as a Nash Equilibrium. Equilibrium effort differs markedly from constant, stochastic or proportional contacts reduction. It adjusts to daily incidence of hospitalization in a way that creates a slightly decreasing plateau in epidemic prevalence. Calibration on French data shows that a business-as-usual benchmark yields an overestimation of the number of deaths by a factor of 10 compared to benchmarks with equilibrium efforts. However, lockdown saves nearly twice as many lives as individual efforts alone. Public policies post-lockdown have a limited impact as they partly crowd out individual efforts. Communication that increases risk salience is more effective. Public Library of Science 2021-05-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8104446/ /pubmed/33961652 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250764 Text en © 2021 Aubert, Augeraud-Véron https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Aubert, Cécile
Augeraud-Véron, Emmanuelle
The relative power of individual distancing efforts and public policies to curb the COVID-19 epidemics
title The relative power of individual distancing efforts and public policies to curb the COVID-19 epidemics
title_full The relative power of individual distancing efforts and public policies to curb the COVID-19 epidemics
title_fullStr The relative power of individual distancing efforts and public policies to curb the COVID-19 epidemics
title_full_unstemmed The relative power of individual distancing efforts and public policies to curb the COVID-19 epidemics
title_short The relative power of individual distancing efforts and public policies to curb the COVID-19 epidemics
title_sort relative power of individual distancing efforts and public policies to curb the covid-19 epidemics
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8104446/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33961652
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250764
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