Stochastic epidemic outbreaks: why epidemics are like lasers

Ira B Schwartz; Lora Billings

doi:10.1117/12.547642

25 May 2004 Stochastic epidemic outbreaks: why epidemics are like lasers

Ira B Schwartz, Lora Billings

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Proceedings Volume 5471, Noise in Complex Systems and Stochastic Dynamics II; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.547642
Event: Second International Symposium on Fluctuations and Noise, 2004, Maspalomas, Gran Canaria Island, Spain

Abstract

Many diseases, such as childhood diseases, dengue fever, and West Nile virus, appear to oscillate randomly as a function of seasonal environmental or social changes. Such oscillations appear to have a chaotic bursting character, although it is still uncertain how much is due to random fluctuations. Such bursting in the presence of noise is also observed in driven lasers. In this talk, I will show how noise can excite random outbreaks in simple models of seasonally driven outbreaks, as well as lasers. The models for both population dynamics will be shown to share the same class of underlying topology, which plays a major role in the cause of observed stochastic bursting.

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Ira B Schwartz and Lora Billings "Stochastic epidemic outbreaks: why epidemics are like lasers", Proc. SPIE 5471, Noise in Complex Systems and Stochastic Dynamics II, (25 May 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.547642

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