Epidemic control with endogenous treatment capability under popular discontent and social fatigue

Fouad El Ouardighi, Eugene Khmelnitsky and Suresh Sethi

Production and Operations Management, 2022, vol. 31, issue 4, 1734-1752

Abstract: This paper investigates how the optimization of policymaker interventions against an epidemic disease is affected by contextual factors related to (i) a cost‐centered approach to countering the epidemic, (ii) eventual correlative popular discontent, and (iii) growing social fatigue engendered by nontherapeutic interventions. Three nontherapeutic policies—mobility restrictions (MR), securing social interactions (SSI), and a combination of both (MR + SSI)—are compared in terms of effectiveness and efficiency in preventing infections and saving lives. The costs associated with these policies are economic as well as operational. The objective is to select the lowest cost policy that is the least sensitive to the cited contextual factors. In many ways, our model applies to the Covid‐19 pandemic in its prevaccine phase. Our study shows the significant influence of popular discontent on epidemic control policies. We show that in contrast to the standard delayed peak strategy, which seeks to delay and flatten the epidemic peak, there is an alternative strategy, counter to conventional wisdom, which consists of accelerating the onset of the epidemic peak. Although the delayed peak strategy is contingent on popular neutrality, the advanced peak strategy results from popular discontent as a corollary of a cost‐centered approach. We also find that social fatigue does not affect the social cost much but, in contrast to the controlled scenarios without social fatigue, it amplifies the peak of infections. In this context, the inclusive policy that incorporates MR + SSI mitigates the negative impact of social fatigue, although it comes at the cost of tighter restrictions than either of the exclusive policies. We conclude that, as opposed to popular discontent, social fatigue should be disregarded for the sake of greater effectiveness and efficiency in infection and death prevention. Our results can be used by policymakers to allocate resources appropriately in MR, SSI, or both and to build treatment capability.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.13641

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:popmgt:v:31:y:2022:i:4:p:1734-1752

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1111/(ISSN)1937-5956

Access Statistics for this article

Production and Operations Management is currently edited by Kalyan Singhal

More articles in Production and Operations Management from Production and Operations Management Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().