Evolving Lockdown Strategies to Minimize Infections in an Epidemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this paper we evaluate the impact of different lockdown strategies upon the total number of infections during an epidemic. The strategies are based upon the percentage of the population infected during a given time step, as well as upon the amount by which interactions must be reduced during lockdown. We use a weighted personal contact network to represent the population, its interactions, and the relative strengths of those interactions. During lockdown edges from this network are removed. We use an evolutionary algorithm to choose the set of edges to be removed so as to minimize infections, comparing different strategies. We show that allowing the evolutionary algorithm to choose which edges to remove significantly reduces the overall number of infections in comparison to random selection. In fact, the EA results for the least stringent conditions were similar or better to the random results for the most stringent conditions, showing that a judicious choice of restrictions during lockdown has the greatest effect on reducing infections. The evolutionary algorithm tends to favour a situation in which during lockdown individuals would reduce their number of contacts, as opposed to lessening the strength of their connections.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".