Smallpox and its eradication

Elwood, J Mark

doi:10.1136/jech.43.1.92

Cited by 21 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…The epidemics of infectious diseases pose a great threat to human health, such as early SARS [1][2][3], H1N1 [4][5][6], tuberculosis [7][8][9], and COVID-19 [10][11][12][13]. For preventing those diseases, vaccination has always been one of the most effective measures to be taken [14][15][16][17]. Research has testified that the vaccine coverage level is crucial to effectively prevent a large-scale epidemic of diseases such as eradicate influenza epidemics [18][19][20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individualism or Collectivism: A Reinforcement Learning Mechanism for Vaccination Decisions

Qiao

Qiu

et al. 2021

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Previous studies have pointed out that it is hard to achieve the level of herd immunity for the population and then effectively stop disease propagation from the perspective of public health, if individuals just make vaccination decisions based on individualism. Individuals in reality often exist in the form of groups and cooperate in or among communities. Meanwhile, society studies have suggested that we cannot ignore the existence and influence of collectivism for studying individuals’ decision-making. Regarding this, we formulate two vaccination strategies: individualistic strategy and collectivist strategy. The former helps individuals taking vaccination action after evaluating their perceived risk and cost of themselves, while the latter focuses on evaluating their contribution to their communities. More significantly, we propose a reinforcement learning mechanism based on policy gradient. Each individual can adaptively pick one of these two strategies after weighing their probabilities with a two-layer neural network whose parameters are dynamically updated with his/her more and more vaccination experience. Experimental results on scale-free networks verify that the reinforcement learning mechanism can effectively improve the vaccine coverage level of communities. Moreover, communities can always get higher total payoffs with fewer costs paid, comparing that of pure individualistic strategy. Such performance mostly stems from individuals’ adaptively picking collectivist strategy. Our study suggests that public health authorities should encourage individuals to make vaccination decisions from the perspective of their local mixed groups. Especially, it is more worthy of noting that individuals with low degrees are more significant as their vaccination behaviors can more sharply improve vaccination coverage of their groups and greatly reduce epidemic size.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individualism or Collectivism: A Reinforcement Learning Mechanism for Vaccination Decisions

Qiao

Qiu

et al. 2021

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“…To date, the only successful example of an eradicated communicable disease is smallpox, the last case having been reported in 1977 in Somalia [7]. This astonishing result was obtained through the implementation of a world-wide mass vaccination campaign.…”

Section: Hepatitis C Vaccinementioning

confidence: 99%

Elimination of hepatitis C in Europe: can WHO targets be achieved?

Matičič

Lombardi

Mondelli

et al. 2020

Clinical Microbiology and Infection

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Background: Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection affects 71 million people worldwide. The availability of highly efficient direct-acting antivirals has revolutionized the treatment landscape with over 95% cure rates. The WHO has launched a global programme to achieve rather ambitious HCV elimination targets for 2030. Objectives: This article aims to provide a critical overview of the current HCV elimination programmes in Europe highlighting the elements that should be implemented to achieve elimination and those that are already in place to promote this process. Sources: Review of the recently published literature and opinion of experts in the field. Content: Elimination of hepatitis C as a public health threat appears to be a difficult task, which should be subdivided into smaller targets, the so-called micro-elimination goals, to increase chances of success. Macro-elimination strategies based on mass-screening are difficult to implement. Evidence supporting the efficacy of micro-elimination comes from key populations, such as people who inject drugs. HCV elimination is proceeding at different speeds in Europe. Some countries are on target with the WHO's objectives whereas others lack economic support and political advocacy, and have insufficient infrastructures to achieve this. The absence of an effective prophylactic vaccine is hampering the process and should be overcome. Implications: Elimination of hepatitis C worldwide appears plausible, but in several countries probably not within the time frame suggested by the WHO. In the absence of vaccination, universal access to HCV treatment would act as a 'therapeutic' option to reduce transmission, especially in high-risk populations.

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“…Notably, mortality of newly introduced viruses can decrease after a certain period of circulation as the pandemic influenza transforms into a seasonal influenza, possibly due to immune response to reinfection and viral adaptation in humans in post-pandemic epidemics ( Barry et al, 2008 ; Dawood et al, 2012 ; Lin et al, 2012 ). Similarly, mortalities of measles and smallpox are reportedly high in naïve populations, but less in populations where such viruses coexist ( Elwood, 1989 ; Shanks et al, 2011 ).…”

Section: Zoonotic Transmission Adaptation To Humans and Eradicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Viruses That Can and Cannot Coexist With Humans and the Future of SARS-CoV-2

Furuse

Oshitani

2020

Front. Microbiol.

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Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become a worldwide pandemic. Many projections concerning the outbreak, such as the estimated number of cases and deaths in upcoming months, have been made available. However, what happens to the virus after the pandemic subsides has not been fully explored. In this article, we discuss the ways that past and present human viruses have emerged via zoonotic transmission, the mechanisms that they have acquired the ability for effective transmission among humans, the process to sustain a chain of transmission to coexist with humans, and the factors important for complete containment leading to eradication of viruses. These aspects of viral disease may provide clues for the future path that SARS-CoV-2 might take in relation to human infection.

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Smallpox and its eradication

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

Individualism or Collectivism: A Reinforcement Learning Mechanism for Vaccination Decisions

Individualism or Collectivism: A Reinforcement Learning Mechanism for Vaccination Decisions

Elimination of hepatitis C in Europe: can WHO targets be achieved?

Viruses That Can and Cannot Coexist With Humans and the Future of SARS-CoV-2

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