Impacts of self-initiated behavioral responses and pandemic fatigue on the epidemic spread in time-varying multiplex networks

Abstract

As restrictive interventions implemented by the government are lifted, the self-initiated behavioral responses have become fundamental for long-term coping with the epidemic waves in the future. Based on the observation of the individual’s behavioral responses induced by epidemic spread in real life, we consider two representative behavioral responses, including self-protection and self-isolation. Significantly, self-protection behavior is usually driven by susceptible individuals and depends on the dynamic epidemic-related information from different channels and their combined effects, while self-isolation behavior is driven by infected individuals. Over time, the emergence of pandemic fatigue may gradually affect the willingness of infected individuals to comply with self-isolation. For this phenomenon, we aim to study the effect of dynamic self-protection and self-isolation fatigue on the epidemic spread. To this aim, we propose the SEIQR (Susceptible–Exposed–Infected–Quarantined–Recovered) model with dynamic self-protection and self-isolation fatigue by using the mean-field approach. Under the framework of time-varying multiplex networks, we theoretically derive the critical threshold of epidemic spread under the joint behavioral responses. Experiment results show that both self-protection and self-isolation can significantly reduce the scale of epidemic spread, while self-isolation fatigue will weaken their effectiveness in mitigating the epidemic spread. Compared with constant self-protection, the effectiveness of dynamic self-protection also depends on the combined effects of the dynamic epidemic-related information obtained from different channels, and physical contact network plays a more significant role. Interestingly, the effectiveness of self-isolation depends on individual’s initiative to take self-isolation and individual’s fatigue to comply with self-isolation, and more effective self-protection behavior can greatly reduce dependence on them. More importantly, compared with constant self-isolation fatigue, dynamic self-isolation fatigue can flatten the dynamics curve with a significantly reduced peak value. In conclusion, improving the willingness of susceptible individuals to take more effective self-protection behavior and the initiative of infected individuals to take self-isolation behavior, while reducing the fatigue of infected individuals to comply with self-isolation behavior is a considerable means to effectively inhibit the spread of emergent epidemics.