Behaviour
In infectious disease outbreaks we often see the population reacting to outbreak severity, changing the transmission dynamics over time. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to voluntary and government-mandated physical distancing across the world, which slows spread. Further, we see these behaviours relax when case counts are low and increase when high.
- One way to partially account for these behaviours in a model is to include covariates such as Google mobility data to account for changes in population mobility, or vaccine uptake. However, such measures may miss out on important subpopulations (e.g., those who do not carry cell phones),behaviours such as mask wearing and a range of risk factors.