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Optimal Dynamic Policies For Influenza Management, Michael Ludkovski, Jarad Niemi

Jarad Niemi

Management policies for influenza outbreaks balance the expected morbidity and mortality costs versus the cost of intervention policies. We present a methodology for dynamic determination of optimal policies in a completely observed stochastic compartmental model with parameter uncertainty. Our approach is simulation-based and searches the full set of sequential control strategies. For each time point, it generates a policy map describing the optimal intervention to implement as a function of outbreak state and Bayesian parameter posteriors. As a running example, we study a stochastic SIR model with isolation and vaccination as two possible interventions. Numerical simulations based on a classic …