Entropic decay of an epidemic towards herd immunity

TL;DR

This paper models epidemic wave decay using thermodynamics, linking entropy increase to herd immunity thresholds and providing a new theoretical criterion for epidemic control.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamic framework to describe epidemic wave decay and derives a novel entropy-based criterion for herd immunity.

Findings

Epidemic wave shape relates to exponential decay in large inhomogeneous systems.

Entropy increase drives the epidemic towards a stable infected fraction.

A thermodynamic criterion for herd immunity is established.

Abstract

The shape of an epidemic wave in simple epidemic models applies to a homogeneous distribution of infected people in the population. In large inhomogeneous systems, at country-scale for instance, the wave shape is similar except for the short time behavior. For such cases, we show that the full wave shape is tied to an exponential decay. Using out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics, we build a model in which this decay results from an increase in entropy until reaching a stable infected population fraction. We find that the elementary probability of being infected determines this fraction, leading to a thermodynamic criterion for herd immunity and epidemic outbreaks.