Epidemic-Driven Collapse in a System with Limited Economic Resource. II

TL;DR

This paper models how an epidemic can cause socioeconomic collapse in a system with limited resources, using a coupled SIS-like model with feedback mechanisms and activation laws, highlighting collapse mitigation strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupled epidemic-economic model with activation dynamics, demonstrating how limited resources can lead to collapse and exploring mitigation via subsidies and quarantine.

Findings

System collapse can occur due to epidemic spread and resource depletion.

External subsidies and debt can partially prevent collapse.

Quarantine outcomes depend on initial resources and activation energy.

Abstract

We consider a possibility of socioeconomic collapse caused by the spread of epidemic. To this end, we exploit a simple SIS-like (susceptible-infected-susceptible) model with negative feedback between the infected population size and a collective economic resource associated with the average amount of money or income per economic agent. The coupling mechanism in such a system is supposed to be of activation type, with the recovery rate governed by the Arrhenius-like law. In this case, economic resource formally plays the role of effective market temperature and the minimum level of resource consumption is associated with activation energy. Such a coupling can result in the collapsing effect opposite to thermal explosion, so that the epidemic could ultimately drive the system to a collapse at nonzero activation energy because of the limited resource. In this case, the system can no longer stabilize and return to the stable pre-epidemic state or a poorer post-epidemic state. We demonstrate that the system's collapse can partially be mitigated by external subsidies meaning constant resource inflow from some external source or by means of debt interpreted as a negative resource. We also consider a simple quarantine scenario and show that it can lead to different socioeconomic outcomes, depending on initial resource (market temperature) and the minimum level of resource consumption (activation energy).