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[stem-ebola] Social distancing to explain waves of infection

Dear all

Following up on the brief comments made at today's community call on
social distancing (in the context of influenza)...

Dynamic social distancing is a highly plausible (but not the only!)
explanation for the observed multiple waves of infection regularly
observed in influenza pandemics. The following papers are just a few
highlights from the literature:

Bootsma, M. & Ferguson, N. The effect of public health measures on the
1918 influenza pandemic in U.S. cities Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.,
2007, 104, 7588-93

Quantifying social distancing arising from pandemic influenza. J Roy Soc
Interface, 2008, 5, 631-639

He D, Dushoff J, Day T, Ma J, Earn DJD. 2013 Inferring the causes of the
three waves of the 1918 influenza pandemic in England and Wales. Proc R
Soc B 280: 20131345. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.1345

He D, Dushoff J, Day T, Ma J, Earn DJD. 2011 Mechanistic modelling of
the three waves of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Theor. Ecol. 4, 283–288.
(doi:10.1007/s12080-011-0123-3)

Cauchemez, S.; Ferguson, N. M.; Wachtel, C.; Tegnell, A.; Saour, G.;
Duncan, B. & Nicoll, A. Closure of schools during an influenza pandemic.
Lancet Infect Dis, 2009, 9, 473-481

Also note these explanations of waves in influenza have been critiqued
(by me and others) as their are immunological explanations available as
well:

McCaw JM, Stone L, F1000 Prime recommendation on “Inferring the causes
of the three waves of the 1918 influenza pandemic in England and Wales”,
F1000 Prime, DOI: 10.3410/f.718074534.793482068 (28 August 2013).

Bolton KJ, McCaw JM, McVernon J, Mathews JD, The influence of changing
host immunity on 1918-19 pandemic dynamics, Epidemics 8: 18-27 (2014).

I'm very happy to discuss how these observations and modelling ideas may
be relevant (or not!) to ebola.

With Kind Regards
James

-- 
Dr James McCaw
ARC Future Fellow, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics
School Higher Degree Research Coordinator
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
Room 357, Level 3, 207 Bouverie St, Carlton
The University of Melbourne, VIC 3010, AUSTRALIA
Phone: +61 3 8344 9145
Email: jamesm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://mathmodelling.sph.unimelb.edu.au
     http://epi.unimelb.edu.au






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