Jude will be visiting Mark Lewis's research group  on Monday and will give the following talk.Title of Talk:

Title: Cost and social distancing dynamics in a mathematical model of COVID-19 with application to Ontario, Canada

Abstract: In this talk I will present a  mathematical model of COVID-19 in which the decision to increase or decrease social distancing is modelled dynamically as a function of the measured active and total cases as well as the perceived cost of isolating.   Along with the cost of isolation, I will define a healthcare cost and a total cost and explore these costs by adjusting parameters that could change with policy decisions.  I will show  that the minimum costs are not always associated with increased spending and increased vigilance which is due to the desire for people to not distance and the fatigue they experience when they do.  I will demonstrate that an increased in the number of lock-downs, each of shorter duration can lead to minimal costs.  The  results  obtained from fitting the model to case data in Ontario will be presented.