To vaccinate or not to vaccinate: A comprehensive study of vaccination-subsidizing policies with multi-agent simulations and mean-field modeling
To vaccinate or not to vaccinate: A comprehensive study of vaccination-subsidizing policies with multi-agent simulations and mean-field modeling
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DOI：
10.1016/j.jtbi.2019.02.013
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发表时间：
2019-05-21
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Jusup, Marko
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kuga, Kazuki;Tanimoto, Jun;Jusup, Marko
我们结合进化博弈论和数学流行病学的要素，综合评估疫苗补贴政策在季节性疫情面前的表现。我们进行了多代理模拟，以了解底层社交网络的拓扑如何影响结果。我们还设计了平均场近似来确认模拟结果并更好地理解不完美疫苗的影响。衡量补贴绩效的主要指标是社会总回报，即疫苗接种成本、感染成本和补贴带来的税收负担之和。我们发现在两种情况下疫苗接种补贴政策会适得其反。第一种是当补贴试图增加过去未接种疫苗的人的疫苗接种量时，这无意中对自愿接种者产生了负面激励，导致他们为了获得补贴而放弃接种疫苗。第二种是过度支出的结果，此时进一步增加疫苗接种覆盖率的边际成本高于通过增加覆盖率避免的相应感染边际成本。如果连接变得随机和异构，那么底层社交网络的拓扑就会大大恶化补贴的表现，就像人类社交网络中经常出现的情况一样。不完善的疫苗还会恶化补贴绩效，从而缩小或完全关闭疫苗补贴政策战胜无补贴政策的窗口。这些结果意味着补贴应针对自愿疫苗接种者，同时避免超支。一旦实现这一点，补贴是完全还是部分抵消疫苗接种费用就没有什么区别了。 (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. 保留所有权利。
We combined the elements of evolutionary game theory and mathematical epidemiology to comprehensively evaluate the performance of vaccination-subsidizing policies in the face of a seasonal epidemic. We conducted multi-agent simulations to, among others, find out how the topology of the underlying social networks affects the results. We also devised a mean-field approximation to confirm the simulation results and to better understand the influences of an imperfect vaccine. The main measure of a subsidy' performance was the total social payoff as a sum of vaccination costs, infection costs, and tax burdens due to the subsidy. We find two types of situations in which vaccination-subsidizing policies act counterproductively. The first type arises when the subsidy attempts to increase vaccination among past non-vaccinators, which inadvertently creates a negative incentive for voluntary vaccinators to abstain from vaccination in hope of getting subsidized. The second type is a consequence of overspending at which point the marginal cost of further increasing vaccination coverage is higher than the corresponding marginal cost of infections avoided by this increased coverage. The topology of the underlying social networks considerably worsens the subsidy's performance if connections become random and heterogeneous, as is often the case in human social networks. An imperfect vaccine also worsens the subsidy's performance, thus narrowing or completely closing the window for vaccination-subsidizing policies to beat the no-subsidy policy. These results imply that subsidies should be aimed at voluntary vaccinators while avoiding overspending. Once this is achieved, it makes little difference whether the subsidy fully or partly offsets the vaccination cost. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.